The Light in Your Eyes
by Mals86
Summary: Katniss and Peeta grow closer together in what's left of District Twelve, with successes and setbacks. Set at end of Mockingjay, pre-Epilogue. Will be multiple chapter, rated M for later chapter content. Some minor characters OOC.
1. Chapter 1: Homecoming

Chapter 1

_Peeta_

So: homeward bound. It still feels strange. But then almost everything does these days, unless it hurts.

I always liked trains before. The motion, the changing scenery. Travel's still pretty restricted, and I'm sure that someone has pulled strings to get me on this train going back to what's left of District Twelve.

And why am I going back? I have no family there. Most of the few friends that survived the bombing are still in Thirteen, or so I hear. There's little housing and almost no infrastructure. I'm not entirely sure how they're getting food. But _she's_ there. And Haymitch is there. So I figure I ought to be there, too.

It's not as if there's a place for me elsewhere, either. The Capitol? It's the scene of blood and pain and fire, the place where they tortured me, the place where I went mad and nearly killed _her_. I did kill my squad member... Mitchell, I think his name was. I couldn't live there, ever. The hospital was okay, in terms of not being scary, but I have had it to my back teeth with hospitals. I'm sick of them. I want to see sky above me.

I could maybe live in Four, I think. I liked the ocean. And there was a doctor in Thirteen who was really from Six, the southern part of it, and she said it was just across the mountain range from us in Twelve, just east a couple of hundred miles. I could live there, maybe, in the mountains that look like mine but aren't quite them.

But I know, of course, that it can only be Twelve. That if I go somewhere else, I'll be giving up on myself. That if I really want to seize my life and take it back, that will be the place. I said as much to Dr. Aurelius, and he just adjusted his glasses and tilted his head in that questioning way of his. We talked about what I'd need there. Things I should do, things I shouldn't do. He's given me some pills I'm supposed to take every day, to smooth out my emotions. I'm taking them now, and at the moment I'm pretty grateful for them, because I'm on edge and I can't imagine how bad it would be if I didn't have this little layer of cotton insulating me. I hope to stop using them at some point, but we'll see.

I want to see _her_, but also I don't want to.

The closer we get, the less able I am to sit still. I'm fidgeting. There's that flat-topped mountain that's about ten minutes away from the station in Twelve (is there still a station in Twelve?). Almost there, almost there... It turns out that the station is a blackened shell, but it's still standing. I get off the train, I grab my bag, I step out onto what used to be the street. What's left in Twelve?... pretty much nothing, that's what. Pieces of walls. Ashes everywhere.

There's the bakery, only one wall standing and it's the back wall where the brick ovens used to be. They're broken and ruined. _Father_, I think, and I have to just stand there a minute and breathe. I won't give in to those flames in my mind. I won't do it. I squeeze the handle on my bag until it digs into my hand, and that helps.

I walk past the rubble of the street where I used to live, names echoing in my head. The Gages lived there. That's Mayor Undersee's house. Next to them, the Williams. The Hagas. Jody Miller and her two brothers next to the Hagas. _Father standing next to the brick ovens. Banner stacking rolls onto the cooling racks._

I don't notice that I have stopped walking until someone grabs my shoulder. I have to work to make my eyes focus and my ears start hearing again. There's a guy there in my face saying my full name, gripping my shoulder, looking concerned. It takes me a little more work to get my mouth in gear. "I know you," I say. I do. I can't come up with his name, though.

"Joss Kidd. I was a couple years ahead of you in school," he says, and now I place him. "You beat my butt at wrestling when you were just about fourteen," he goes on, and smiles.

I remember him. Seam kid, I think, because his hair is dark and his eyes are that strange indeterminate color between brown and green. And he's got that wiry build that Haymitch had as a youngster, too. "Hi, Joss," I say, because that's what you say when you meet someone.

"Good to see you come _home_," he says with emphasis, and my face must show what a ludicrous idea I think this is, because it _is_ ludicrous. This is not home. Home has my family in it. Home has whole buildings in it, and people I know, and my blue-green mountains. Home does not have this bizarre dusting of gray stuff that I don't even want to think about what it's made up of.

So I go ahead and say it. "Doesn't look much like home." My voice catches on the last word.

"I know," he says. He's not smiling now, hasn't been since my face went weird. "I know, but the funny thing is, it's what we've got and I still call it home." I nod, considering it. I've decided to be here, I might as well call it what it is. Okay, _so_, this-is-now home. "Been working on the cleanup crew. You want a ride home?" he asks me, pointing at some dusty wagons. This too is ludicrous. It'll take me ten minutes.

If I don't get sidetracked by memories. Which I might.

"Nah, thanks," I tell him, and heft my bag again. "Good to see you, Joss."

"You too, man," he says, and claps me on the shoulder. I watch him walk away from me, and at the same time I'm watching my school memories of this guy who tried his best to flip me onto my back on a mat, and failed, and then spent the next three months glaring at me in the cafeteria. And now he's happy to see me. I suppose it's doubly weird that I'm actually glad to see him.

Okay, so now I've got to get from the square to the Victors' Village, which I've been told is still standing. It's no more than a ten-minute walk, and even in my broken-down condition shouldn't take me more than fifteen. It actually takes something like half an hour, because I keep stopping to breathe. This dust gets into your eyes, and your mouth.

The Village looks like itself, and it's the only place I've seen so far in Twelve that does. The yards are unkempt, but other than that, things look fine. There's a thin curl of smoke from the chimney at _her _house, and a fatter one from Haymitch's. I grope for the key to my house at the top of the far left shutter, and although I used to not have any trouble reaching this height, now it's difficult. I find it, though, and let myself in. The house looks fine on the inside, too. A little dusty and stale-smelling, and it's chilly, but there's some wood in the box by the stove.

I'll have to start a fire myself. I allow myself to think only of small flames, the homely friendliness of a match. My brain skates across _She and I in a chariot wearing fake_ _fire_, skims the top of _a Capitol hovercraft on fire on a screen_, and zooms past _children in an inferno_, because I force it to go back to the homely friendliness of a match flame. Every morning my father would go down and poke the fire in the bakery ovens; it never really went out, even in the summer. I used to love watching the light flicker on his face.

So, then, a good memory: _Father poking up the fire in the ovens, about to turn to me with a smile and ask me for an armful of kindling_. That. Yes. And then I have no trouble at all stacking some wood in the stove and lighting a match. I can do this.

I wash my hands and sit down at the kitchen table. There's some food in my bag – a little dried fruit, some beef jerky, two of those small loaves of bread with seeds in it. It's traveling food, and there's not that much of it. I'll have to get some more tomorrow. The fire crackles in the stove.

Without warning she's in my head. _ Katniss_. I want to see her. I don't want to see her. I want her to know that I'm here. I could do something nice for her... not bread, I'm not sure I'm up to that yet. I have to give her Dr. Aurelius' message, but telling her to answer her phone isn't really "doing something nice." The old Katniss would have been furious at being told what to do, and I can't imagine the current Katniss would find it any less infuriating.

I eat some of the food and drink some water. This, at least, seems like home: at least the water tastes right. After I eat, I go walk around outside my house for awhile, looking at stuff. Some of the flowering bushes are not doing so well (dry weather? Cold? Heat? The dust, or ashes, or whatever it is floating around in the air?), and I get to thinking, _Hey, we should plant something_. Something bright and growing and cheerful, something with good memories... and I have it! I know what to plant, and I even know where to go get them. I know they grow in the woods, and I have a wheelbarrow right here. Even better, I can probably plant them without bothering her at all.

I'm suddenly so tired that I go into the house, toss some more wood into the stove, and collapse on the couch under a blanket. The nightmares only wake me twice, and they're fuzzy ones. In the first, I'm mixing sweet dough for sticky buns under the eagle eye of my mother, and she's unhappy with me. I've measured wrong. I've added items in the wrong order. I start again. Now I've put cumin in the sweet dough instead of cinnamon and I have to start once more. She's angry. I wake and remember there's no bakery, and decide not to remember there's no Mother. The second nightmare is more familiar: Cato has me in a headlock on the Cornucopia, the beast mutts with tribute eyes are snarling and leaping on the ground below. Katniss has an arrow aimed straight at us. Cato keeps talking and talking and Katniss keeps not shooting him, and I keep choking to death. I wake with a dry mouth, drink some water, go back to sleep.

The sun comes early, so when my eyes open I just go ahead and get up. I head off into the woods with shovel and wheelbarrow, and it's so pretty. It's just so, so pretty in the woods, and I can see why she likes being out here. I don't go far, just a little ways in, and here's a whole bank of them: evening primrose. Spring is really coming, it's really almost here, I notice, and my eyes are wet suddenly with the thought of the flowers being here to see the spring, but the namesake never seeing it again. Such a little sweetheart, Prim. Soft, but strong too. Smart. Tender-hearted. And_ how_ she looked up to Katniss. We talked some, Prim and me. She had a way of getting right to the heart of things, but not a mean way. I miss her.

I dig up the primroses and push the wheelbarrow back. Everything is quiet and dark at Katniss's house. I want to see her. I don't want to see her. I start digging the planting holes along the side of the house, where I think they would look best.

I've got three dug and have just begun on the fourth hole when she's suddenly just_ there_ – no wonder she's such an excellent hunter, she's so quiet I didn't hear her coming at all. She looks beautiful. She looks just as damaged as I do. She's a mess. She's too thin and her hair is a rat's nest, and she's panicked and furious with fists clenched. She looks _beautiful_.

She comes to a dead stop when she sees me. "You're back," she says, and I can't tell what she's thinking.

I explain about the primroses, and give her Dr. Aurelius' message about answering the stupid phone once in a while. She looks me up and down, and just as I'm getting nervous about it, she nods. She nods like, "Yeah, it's okay if you plant those," or "Yeah, whatever, I'm busy," and disappears back into the house.

I'm not trying to listen, but I hear the front door lock, and I hear footsteps fast on the stairs, up then down. I hear something glass break. An upper-story window goes up, and the water in the house goes on, probably the shower because it runs for a long time. I plant primroses and then I get a bucket from my house and water them, and the shower is still running inside her house.

I don't allow myself to think about what she looks like in the shower. Instead, I think about how she looked coming around the corner of the house, a complete wreck but so prepared for mayhem, a fierce divine being bent on vengeance... and then stopping short and looking at me, really _looking_ at me.

I think: She might not hate me, after all.


	2. Chapter 2: That Stupid Cat

**AN: Chapters will continue to be posted on an irregular basis. Reviews are appreciated! As per the usual, I do not claim to own any The Hunger Games material.**

Chapter 2

_Katniss_

Yesterday was _exhausting_. Dr. Aurelius, far away in the Capitol, would call it "cathartic."

It was that stupid cat's fault. Well, I guess first it was Peeta showing up and mentioning her name and planting flowers for her, all thin and scarred but looking so like himself around the eyes. That hurt, somehow – that he was so damaged that I'd written him off, and yet he's doing better than I am. Catch_ him_ immobile and depressed for weeks? Apparently not. And I hadn't even changed clothes since I'd arrived in Twelve.

Then the hideous reminder of Snow's rose in my room. It's gone now, but I keep catching flashes of white out of the corner of my eye, and it's giving me the creeps. Then the first shower I've had in days (weeks?) and combing out my hair, and going into the woods and missing Gale. Finding out Madge is dead. Which I knew already, I guess, because I'd never seen her in District Thirteen.

_Then_ that stupid cat showed up, and I had to tell him that Prim isn't here. Isn't ever, ever coming back. And we cried and moaned and yelled and wailed and caterwauled for so long that my voice is hoarse today.

I think maybe the most annoying part of that stupid cat being back is that I can't hate him anymore. He was hers. And you know what's funny? He and I, we're a lot alike. We only love her, and no one else. Everyone else gets hissed at. At least we can take care of each other now.

It's still awkward, talking with my mother. I still feel that she's a weak person who won't make herself face things, and I still feel hurt that she never put me at the top of her list. If I had died and Prim lived, she'd be here because Prim needed her. Not me. But maybe that's just selfish of me, I don't know. And no one else loved Prim like my mother and me, and that stupid cat, so we have that in common.

Breakfast was good. I think it's the first time that anything has actually had any taste for me in weeks (months?). Sae made scrambled eggs with chives and a bit of cheese. Peeta brought over fresh wheat bread with all kinds of seeds and nuts in it, and it was exactly as delicious as it smelled. And that stupid cat was grateful enough for the bacon that he twined himself around my legs over and over, making some weird noise that Peeta chose to interpret as meaning he, the cat, was content.

I'm not quite sure why Peeta thinks that it is perfectly fine with me for him to sit in my kitchen eating Sae's eggs. It's weird. I don't think I like it. The only good thing about it is that he doesn't really talk to me, doesn't watch me too closely. Instead, he's conversing with Sae about the cleanup project in town, and shoveling eggs in like there's not going to be any breakfast tomorrow, so_ I _can watch _him_. Hear his voice all light and comfortable, catch his occasional smile.

Something about seeing him be just, you know, _normal _makes me feel like there's a balloon in my chest, inflating just a little bit at a time. Maybe I do like his being here after all, I'm not sure.

I go out after breakfast in hunting clothes, ducking under the old fence into the woods. I don't go far in. I see squirrels but I don't shoot anything, it's enough to just be here. I stay most of the day, resting, thinking about things I like: the way the undersides of the leaves turn in the wind, all at once. The way clouds drift past overhead. Sunsets.

I head home in the afternoon and eat the stew Sae has left me on the stove. I think it might be made with dried beef since the texture is a little odd, but there are carrots and potatoes and onions in it, and some herbs I can't place, and it's good. I shower and change into fresh clothes, and then I'm so tired I go and get into my own bed, in my room, just as if things are normal here at my house that does not contain my mother, or my sister.

I think of Peeta staying with me that time I hurt my ankle, when the Peacekeepers had re-electrified the fence and I almost got trapped on the other side of it. I'd asked him to stay with me until I went to sleep, and he'd said, "Always."

I treasure that. But I can't count on him. He's just as damaged as I am, despite his good showing at breakfast this morning. He was so careful not to look at me or talk to me too much, and yet I know if he's here in Twelve that he wants something from me. Or he wants to give me something, I don't know which.

Sometime during the night, I dream of Prim. Prim's blond braids, her small careful hands, her sunny little-girl smile that stayed the same even after she wasn't a little girl anymore. I dream of her explaining to her goat Lady that we needed just a little extra goat milk, and could Lady please just make a little more today because she needs another half cup to get another cheese made, and Lady meh-ing away as if she understood every word. I dream of the milky, soapy, girl smell of the back of Prim's neck when we snuggle together for warmth. I dream of her cooing over that stupid cat and asking me to sing to her.

Everything is calm and pretty and comforting, right up until the moment that she looks at me and says, "You killed me, Katniss," and I see my hands holding a silver parachute out to her. It explodes, and Prim becomes a human torch. She burns the outside of me black, and I am screaming but I do not die. I feel myself tossed end over end through the air. There is a puddle. A pig snuffs at me. I can't move because I don't have arms. I scream but I have no voice. Hands pick me up, huge hands with bitten nails. They tear me into pieces, and I am eaten.

I wake up. My throat aches, and the pillow is wet. I sit up, shakily, and see in the moonlight that Buttercup is prowling the hall outside my bedroom. He stops, looks in, paces back and forth outside my open door.

I wish I could sleep with Peeta. If I went over to his house, he'd probably let me stay. It's just, I don't know how he feels about me now. We're a very long way from those innocent nights on the Victory tour train, when we slept wrapped around each other for comfort. He's not that boy anymore. I'm not that girl. Everything is awkward and painful and wrong these days.

But if he has one of those flashbacks again, and I'm not awake enough to help him stop it? Dangerous. And honestly, I'm not sure _I'm_ fit company for anybody, any time. I want to see him. And I don't. How do you talk to someone who used to love you?

I go and find a pad of paper in the study, one my mother used to write patient instructions on, and a pencil. I hate being in the study, so I head for the kitchen and write down all the things I can remember about Prim, everything. The way her hair looked in the sunshine. Her tears of joy over the goat's survival. The sound of her voice when she was happy, and when she was sad. Her favorite foods. Her favorite colors. Things she said to me. The way she could tuck her face into my shoulder and I was the one who felt comforted. Everything.

The next thing I know, it's morning and I wake up at the table with creases in my cheek, still gripping the pencil. What woke me? I recognize the smell of fresh bread, and sit up just in time to see Peeta leaving through the kitchen door, closing it so quietly behind him. "Peeta!" I try to say, but my throat's dry and I hardly make a sound. I stumble out of the chair to the door, but he's already out of sight by the time I open it and get my head out.

Too late. My feet are freezing. I definitely don't feel like chasing him. Or yelling at him to come back.

I could go back to bed now because I'm still so groggy, but that bread smells fantastic, all savory and yeasty, and I don't even try to stop myself opening the cloth bundle. What's in it is a full dozen of my favorite cheese buns, still hot. I just about inhale three and then sit digesting them, sighing every few minutes because I ate too much too fast.

I wonder where he got the cheese.


	3. Chapter 3: Fair

**A/N: Sorry it's taken me so long to update! Also, I apologize for this one being pretty dull... been working on future chapters and they're considerably more interesting. Thanks for your patience.**

**Chapter 3: Fair**

_Katniss_

Peeta keeps coming over for breakfast, usually bearing some kind of delicious baked good, from cornbread to berry muffins to cheese buns to some rich luscious egg bread that he says he can't pronounce the name of. He's always clean and dressed neatly, even if he's got dark circles under his eyes from not sleeping. I know he spends some of his afternoons helping with the cleanup crews, and I know he gets dusty and sweaty, but every time_ I _see him he looks his normal neat, composed self.

The normality might be a triumph of illusion because he was in the burn unit for far longer than I was. Or maybe they did a better job on him because he didn't keep accidentally shredding his new skin, I don't know. I do notice that he doesn't have good range of motion with one shoulder.

He's taller, too. I'm the same size I always was, or maybe thinner, but he's starting to fill out. The muscles he built up when training for the Quell were bulky ones, the kind I saw on the male Careers in our Games. But he's not bulky now. Instead, his body looks... I don't know, harder. Like he's been _baked_, or something like it. I think about it a moment, and then I realize: he's got miner muscles. He's got wiry Seam muscles, built by hard repetitive work and not by eating well and "working out," as the Careers would have called it. There's something about the muscles that appeals to me. Sometimes when I go into town to trade some extra game, I watch him heaving chunks of rubble into the wagons or shoveling ashes, and there's something about it that keeps saying, "man," to me. Like maybe Peeta always belonged in the Seam and just got born in the wrong place, so he's having to learn everything now.

He's worked hard all his life too, but let's be honest, it was hefting hundred-pound bags of flour and stirring dough with a wooden paddle in that big mixing vat, and kneading big lumps of stuff that doesn't fight back. That's not the same as howking lumps of coal out of the earth. And I know I'm not being fair. _Nothing_ is fair, so why should I be?

I'm resolutely ignoring the whisper in my mind telling me that Peeta would say that it's an individual human's responsibility to be as fair as possible, because nothing else will be fair. Nature is never fair, and neither is society, so each one of us has to be fair if there's going to be any fairness at all.

Okay, to be fair: there is a certain amount of physical labor to running a bakery, what with the hefting and stirring and stoking the ovens. Also to be fair: he might not ever really get the concept of o_wing_, but he sure picked up _kindness_ and _generosity_ – and _fairness_ – without living in the Seam. And now I'm back to the admission that he is, in fact, still the best person I know. Hijacking or not.

I think, _he is the only boy I know who might have been anywhere near good enough for Prim_, and then that's horribly painful.

I miss her so much.

But like Dr. Aurelius told me to do, I've set up a routine. It helps me stay focused. Dr. Aurelius calls every week. I finally answered the phone one day a few weeks ago, and we talked, and set up Wednesday afternoons as our day. I don't tell him much, but I do admit that the schedule helps.

_Early morning_: Get up. Dress in hunting clothes. Eat breakfast that Sae prepares. If Peeta is there, make minimal conversation over the breakfast and spend the time trying to decide if he looks better or worse than yesterday. Mostly, it's better, but some days I can tell he's not slept, because the bags under his eyes are dark, and he looks sort of blue around the lips. Some days he doesn't even show, and I go by Haymitch's and leave him a note to check on Peeta, which he may or may not read, much less comply.

_After breakfast_: Go to the woods and hunt, unless it's pouring down rain, which is terrible hunting weather but pretty great for fishing, in which case I hike all the way to the lake and fish. It takes me a couple of weeks to actually hit anything with my old bow, but gradually that muscle memory comes back, and once I take down an impertinent rabbit, I'm unstoppable. Improving my aim and bringing home food does seem to make me feel more like the old me. If I hit my quota early, or if I'm really down, sometimes I sing to the mockingjays. This hurts, but it's a healing kind of hurt. Being in the woods is so much easier than being in the house, because I don't pay so much attention to what's not there. Or who's not there.

_Midday_: Bring back whatever I've managed to gather in the woods, whether greens, berries, nuts, roots, game, and/or fish. If there's more than my little circle (Haymitch, Sae, her granddaughter, Peeta, and myself) can eat over the next day, I take it to town and see if anybody can use it. Somebody always can. The Hob is gone, of course, but there's a building that has a long back wall still standing, and people sometimes trade for things there.

_Mid-afternoon_: I spend the afternoon singing Daddy's songs, or watching the cleanup crews work, unless it's a bad day. If it's one of Peeta's bad days, he doesn't work. He holes up in his house and does... _what?_ He won't say. He paints, maybe. He flashes back and keeps it to himself... I don't know. If it's one of_ my_ bad days, I just go home and sit on the floor and try to make a list of good things. (This is one of Dr. Aurelius' rare stupid ideas. Mostly, he's pretty smart, but this one is dumb. I shouldn't be sad because hot chocolate is delicious? Idiotic. Or maybe my list of good things is just lame.) I take a shower and put on clean clothes. Sometimes I wash clothes and hang them up to dry, but sometimes Sae does it.

_Late afternoon_: Peeta comes over, and I make dinner. Or Sae does. Or, occasionally, Peeta does. Sometimes Haymitch comes over. (Sae never eats dinner with us. She'll eat breakfast, but not dinner. I've never asked why.) I watch Haymitch drink. I count to myself all the ways that I'm not like him, and when my brain starts thinking all the ways that I am like him, I make it stop.

Bedtime: I go to bed. I dream horrible things. I cry, I wake, I try to go back to sleep. I sometimes lie in bed and wish I had Peeta's arms around me, to make me feel safe, and then I remember he's not exactly safe.

I wake up the next day and try again.


	4. Chapter 4: Red Paint

Chapter 4: Red Paint and Nightmares

_Peeta_

We've settled into a routine, one that I'm mostly comfortable with. In some ways, it's easier to be home. Well, by "home" I mean "in Twelve," though it is not and will never be again the District Twelve where I grew up. It's easier because people don't seem to expect much of me, and the water tastes right, and it's not the regimented weirdness of Thirteen. It's easier because it's not the Capitol, site and cause of most of my pain, fear, anger, disappointment, bitterness, terror, anxiety.

In some ways it's harder to be here. In that Capitol hospital, things were safe. I was safe from people, and they were safe from me. If I had a massive hallucinatory flashback, there was always a clutch of attendants to wrestle me into submission before I hurt myself or anyone else. Here? Nothing. I have to gut it out myself. PTSD, they call it, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, and the confusion caused by my hijacking is a big part but not all of it. My stressful experiences include, after all, two Hunger Games _and_ a stint in actual warfare, which might as well have been yet another set of Games.

The mood stabilizers Dr. Aurelius prescribed help to some degree, but they can't block out all my triggers. Last Thursday night there was a big thunderstorm, and it woke me up. Sent me careening through my house banging into stuff, disoriented, terrified that bombs were dropping all around me. I wound up huddled under the kitchen table, and then I must have passed out. On Friday, after I came to clutching a kitchen knife (shades of Haymitch), I found damage all over: two fist-sized holes in the plaster of the stairwell, a knife gash in the back door, clothes dumped out of the dresser in my room. Lucky no one was with me then. Lucky I didn't make my way into my painting room – as few supplies as I have, I'd hate to wreck anything when the painting means so much to my sanity. Sae came over and brought me some lunch that day, telling me that Katniss was worried because I hadn't come to breakfast.

(Did _she_ come to check on me? No, she didn't. Guess she's still afraid of me. Or something. But if she hated me, I don't think she'd have bothered sending someone over.)

The episodes are coming a little less frequently, though. The daytime storm yesterday didn't faze me at all.

Nights are just hard. I dream.

I dream of Johanna and Annie screaming.

I dream of the choking noise Avoxes make when tortured, or attacked by evil rose-smelling mutts.

I dream of Cato dying in a welter of blood and agony.

I dream of killing Brutus, the knife in my hand dragging down past his shoulder and across his chest and plunging into his gut, and he's still not dead, and I panic and stab him in the eye because _she_ is screaming my name and I have to get to her, and then I have to pull the knife _out_ of his eye, and I'd throw up if I had time, but I don't. I have to get to her, I have to. I run and slip, get up and run harder, but I never get there before the force field blows out.

I dream of the firebombs in the Capitol. Children in flames.

I dream of _her_ in the cave, an evil mutt chewing off my leg with her three rows of jagged teeth.

And those are just examples. The list goes on and on, but it's a list I keep trying to forget. Sometimes I write down what I can remember of the dream, and then I go burn the paper in the kitchen stove. This is incredibly wasteful of paper, but if I'm not up to painting the nightmare, it helps to some degree. I've found that painting blood does something horrible to my head – I can try to get the scene accurate, and then I just snap and everything winds up covered in red paint, including me, and I come to hours later with my face wet, as if I've been crying.

I'd throw out the red paint if I dared to. But I might want it sometime, so I just took it over to Haymitch's and asked him to hide it for me.

I might be messed up in the head for life. I don't know. My memory is pretty much shot – I mean, I have_ lots_ of memories, but I'm never sure whether they're real, or I dreamed them, or the Capitol messed with them. I've taken to writing in a blank book I found in the study, just detailing each day, so that I can look back and see what's really happened to me.

I want so much to be sane. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I used to be like, trying to remember who that person was. What he wanted, what he feared, what he loved. How his mental processes ran. I talk to people about Old Peeta, collecting anecdotes and opinions, building a picture of him.

I've heard so many stories of the guy I used to be, and to be honest, he's the one that sounds like a total nutcase. He fell in love with a girl when he was _five_? And stayed in love with her although she never gave him the slightest indication that she might enjoy his company? Risked his life to save hers, with not even the satisfaction that she'd appreciate his sacrifice? C'mon, _that's_ crazy.

Yeah, that really is crazy. I know this, and then I look at her across a breakfast plate at her kitchen table, and my heart just squeezes down into a pathetic, dense ball, sending jolts of emotion all over my body. Never mind that she's this little scrap of a girl, weary and drawn, with scars both visible and invisible, and that she can hardly ever meet my gaze, much less talk to me. I have the strangest feeling that she wants to talk to me. It appears that the irrational, crazy-for-love Old Peeta is still alive in me somewhere down at bedrock level.

Somehow, the presence of irrational Old Peeta, even after everything I've been through, gives me this strange kind of hope. Not that I can _be_ him again, because that's just not possible. But I have hope that I can somehow merge Old Peeta and Hijacked Peeta into a person that's whole. That I can find a way to be a version of me that I don't loathe.


	5. Chapter 5: Nightmare and Comfort

**A/N: I promised these two would start sleeping together again. Here ya go.**

Chapter 5: Nightmare and Comfort

_Katniss_

I wake up screaming.

This is the second bad dream of the night, and as bad as the first one was (Cinna, beaten bloody by Peacekeepers), this one was worse. This one was Peeta, beaten bloody. Kicked, pummeled with those heavy Peacekeeper gloves, beaten with sticks as he lies on white tile, blood splattering all over. And then the scene changes to the arena of the Quell, jungle foliage everywhere and Peeta lying beaten on the ground, bloody roses blooming everywhere on his skin, and he isn't breathing, and suddenly I'm there unable to help or even to breathe, and Finnick kisses Peeta and presses on his chest, giving him air and helping his heart pump. Then suddenly Finnick turns into a mutt, a bronze-haired mutt with sea-green eyes, and he looks up at me once before he chews Peeta's face off with one bite, and I'm screaming and screaming, and then Finnick slices open Peeta's dead chest with those four-inch claws and plucks out his heart –

– and somewhere, my consciousness says, _That's enough dreaming_, and I wake up, my throat hoarse and raw from the screams.

And I don't even think about it. I'm up and running. No shoes, no robe, just me flying like an arrow toward the best comfort I ever knew. I don't stop to think that he might not want me there, or even that he might have locked his door.

But I'm in luck: the lights are on at Peeta's. Upstairs in the back bedroom, the one he calls his painting room, the one with the big windows and a northern exposure with plenty of clear gray daylight.

I don't even knock. I just fling the door open and start up the stairs, and he's coming out of the painting room, wiping his hands on a cloth and looking concerned, and I just barrel right into him there in the hall, wrapping my arms around him and holding on like he's my one chance at life.

"Hey, hey, hey," he says, putting his arms around me and rocking me back and forth. "Hey, it's okay. Katniss? It's not real. It's okay. You're okay. It's not real." He goes on soothing me like that, and I just keep clinging. It's only when I catch my breath some minutes later that I realize I've been crying into his shirt, and it's soaking wet.

I heave a tremendous sigh, and rest my head on his shoulder. He smoothes my hair with one hand. "Bad dream?"

"Really bad," I say.

"Do you want to tell me?" He goes on smoothing my hair, and it's so comforting that I close my eyes as I talk: Cinna beaten. Him beaten and then shocked by the force field, heart stopped, Finnick-the-mutt eating his face...

"That was a pretty bad one," he says. "But not real. I still have my face. It's not any prettier than it ever was, but it's here," and there's a smile in his voice.

That's classic Peeta, him being self-deprecating and humorous again, easing the situation, but I shudder, thinking of him being damaged that way. I love his face the way it is, whole and ungnawed and entirely Peeta-like. "_Good_," I say, and sigh again. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, and the emotional tension is eased, I'm suddenly drained.

I'm also freezing. My toes are like ice. Where Peeta's holding me, I'm warm, but this old cotton nightgown of my mother's, worn to near-transparency with age and too much washing, isn't really sufficient for the spring night. I shiver.

"You cold?" he immediately asks me.

"A little. What were you doing up?" I lean away from his chest (whole, unripped, with his good Peeta heart safely in it) so I can see his face.

"Painting," he says. "I had bad dreams too." Now that he says it, I can smell that he's been drenched in sweat at some recent point. So have I, for what that's worth.

"Matter of fact, Katniss," and he holds me at arm's length so he can make his point, "it was a good thing I was already awake. I do _not_ do well with being woken abruptly."

"Oh," I say in a small voice.

"If I'm awake and prepared, it's fine, you can come over any time. But I have to warn you." He stops a minute, and takes a deep breath. I realize that he's upset. "Haymitch woke me up the other evening, when I'd fallen asleep on the couch. He was plastered, and he thought he'd come over and see if I had any alcohol stashed away, and he woke me up pretty roughly. I nearly took his head off."

That sounds like Hijacked Peeta, not the well of comfort I'm currently experiencing. "With what?" _Does he sleep with a knife now, like Haymitch?_

"With my fist, that's what," he says dryly. "You must not have seen him for a couple of days, or you'd have noticed his black eye. Look, I know you can't plan your nightmares. But I can't plan my flashbacks, either, and you need to know that. For your own safety."

I'm silent for a moment. This is exactly why I'd not come to him to ask if we could sleep together for comfort from the nightmares.

"I don't think..." he says, hesitantly, "I don't think it would happen if you woke up screaming next to me. That's familiar, you sleeping warm next to me. A good memory. I _remember_ that, it was real, they didn't mess with that because they didn't know about it. Just..." he sighs again, and rubs his eye, "just don't grab me and shake me, or make banging noises. And don't lean over me and poke me awake. For some reason that scares the crap out of me."

"Oh," I say again. I shiver again. "Hey. Can I see what you were painting?"

"You probably don't want to," he says, but there's something in his voice that tells me he'd love to show me. "It might disturb you."

"What is it?"

"Well, it's you. In the Capitol, when..." he trails off. He's doing that a lot tonight. I wonder if it's just that we've gotten out of the habit of talking to each other. "When you were arming the Holo to explode."

Ah. That's a bad memory. That was just after Finnick died. "Can I see anyway?" I ask. I might regret it, but I would like to see Peeta's work again.

He shrugs. "Okay." He turns and walks back down the hall to the painting room, still holding my hand.

Although he's far from finished with the canvas on the easel, and it's still little more than a sketch, I would have recognized this scene even without his explanation. I am underground in the Capitol, in my dark gray rebel uniform, bow slung over one arm and my dirty, bloodied hands holding the Holo. My eyes have enormous circles under them, and my braid curls limply into my sweaty neck. My mouth is open and I'm speaking to the Holo, whispering the codeword "nightlock" to arm it for self-destruction, just before I throw it at the mutts.

He's so amazing. With just a few lines and some patches of color, you can practically smell my desperation.

I'm shaking my head in admiration at the skill, even while my stomach curdles from remembering what it was like down there, with those sickening white mutts chasing us and smelling of blood and roses. With all the deaths that were my fault. Messala. Jackson. Leeg 1. Castor. Homes. And dear Finnick, who became my ally and then my friend, and who saved Peeta's life for me. Who saved _my_ life for me, too.

"You're amazing," I whisper. I can't speak out loud for the lump in my throat. I'd love to look at all the drawings tacked up on the walls, the canvases leaning against the walls in stacks, but my eyes are full of tears. "Really. You are. You really _see_ things." I shiver again; gooseflesh is blooming up and down my limbs, and I can feel the soft cotton of Mother's nightgown against my bosom.

I feel rather than see him shake his head. "I think maybe it's a curse," he says softly. "That I see things so clearly."

"No," I say swiftly. "No. It's not your fault that you had to see things that nobody should ever have to see. If you hadn't seen them, you'd still be painting beautiful things, like flowers and trees, and sunsets."

"And you," he whispers, and then sighs. "Sorry. That was... impertinent."

"If you thought it, you should say it," I tell him. "Johanna swears by it." And we laugh just a little, thinking of her insistence that her head doctor told her she shouldn't censor her thoughts. Really, who would ever have thought that I'd become friends with the terrifying killer Johanna Mason? That we'd annoy each other so much, and yet matter so much to each other?

"Well, she does swear a lot," Peeta says, in this considering tone of voice, and we actually laugh this time. My tears have dried now, and I can look at the painting again. It's still amazing.

I suddenly wonder if Johanna has a phone in her house. "Maybe we could call her sometime. I miss her." I've barely finished the sentence when I'm yawning. My eyes feel heavy.

"She probably has a phone," Peeta says. He puts his hand on my arm, and immediately exclaims, "You're cold! Let me get you a blanket, or a robe or something."

"I'm okay," I tell him. "I think I could sleep now."

"Do you want to sleep in the guest room? That bed's made up. It's cozy in there."

I'd rather sleep with him. I yawn again before I can say so. "You really want me to sleep in the guest room?" I say instead, deciding not to follow Johanna's advice.

There's a pause while I yawn yet again. "No," he says, his voice husky. "I'd love it if you slept with me. If you felt like you trusted me enough to sleep with me."

"I'd rather sleep with you," I say, and I can't help smiling just a little. You'd have thought I'd planned the whole nightmare just so I could say this one thing.

"Okay," he says, and there's a little smile in his voice too. He gestures to the easel. "Do you want to get settled while I clean up in here? I can't leave the paint out, it'll dry up."

"I can. Which is your room?"

"Third door on the right – other end of the hall. And borrow some socks if you want. Second dresser drawer. Your feet are probably like ice, and it'll take me forever to get to sleep if you goose me with them." He laughs, and I roll my eyes, but as he turns back to the easel I go down the hall to his room.

I've never been in Peeta's bedroom before. I want to look at everything. The entire room is "neat as a pin," as Mother would say, nothing out of place. Even the clothes he was wearing earlier are stashed neatly in a twig basket on the floor by the closet. The room has plain white walls like all the Victors' houses, but there's a beautiful quilt on the bed, a Flying Geese pattern in shades of orange and yellow and blue. Of course, the linens are tossed by his restless night, and the bottom sheet is loose. I straighten the sheets and tuck them in, noticing how much the pillows smell like him, and quickly, before he can come in, bury my nose in one to just sniff. It's endlessly comforting. If this doesn't work out, this sleeping together, maybe I can just borrow his pillow.

I notice two frames pinned up on the wall, and go closer to look. The first frame holds a pencil drawing of me in profile, chin on my knees, staring off into the distance. The other one is a small canvas of a beautiful sunset, painted in gorgeous shades of orange and pink, yellow and scarlet, and the skyline... and then I recognize it. It's the sunset we saw from atop the Training Center, that day before the Quarter Quell, the day we spent on the roof. When he'd said he wished he could freeze that moment and just live in it for the rest of his life, and I'd released my grip on the future and said, "Okay." He must have painted this sunset recently, from memory, and the thought moves me. He's not all back, that boy – he may never be – but evil mutts do not paint memories like this.

_He's taking a long time cleaning up_, I think. I hear water running in the hall bathroom.

I go to the dresser for socks. The top of the dresser holds a small collection of pretty rocks, and two shells from District Four that stir a memory in my mind: the two of us walking on a beach barefoot. I remember worrying that sand would get into his prosthesis, but he'd just laughed at me and seized my hand, saying, "Let's find some shells." These two were the nicest ones. I sigh.

I grab a pair of his socks and put them on. They're way too big, but my feet _are_ like ice, and they feel instantly better. It won't matter under the covers. I leave the bedside lamp on and have just slid in between the sheets when he comes in. "Find everything you need?" he asks. I nod. "I'm going to ditch this shirt, if you don't mind. It's still a little wet."

"Where I cried on you? Sorry about that," I say.

"What's a wet shirt between friends?" he says, opening the drawer. I can hear the smile in his voice. He turns his back to me and takes off the shirt. I try, and fail, not to stare.

The burn scars still ripple across his back and shoulders, and there's a puckered place about four inches square under his left shoulder blade where the muscle was burned too badly to be regenerated. That would be why he doesn't have good range of motion with that arm, though I think the more he uses it, the better it gets.

And I was right about those miner muscles. He looks like a _man_ these days, the boy's body he had in our first Games left forever behind. There's a patch of blond hair at the small of his back, and for some reason looking at it makes me feel strange in the pit of my stomach.

While I've been looking, he's been tossing the wet shirt into the basket and getting a clean one (neatly folded, of course) out of a drawer. As he tugs it down over his sleep pants, he turns back toward me and closes the drawer. "You think you can sleep now?"

"Yeah. It's getting warm under the covers." I lift the sheets for him, and he turns out the lamp as he slides under.

It takes us several minutes to arrange ourselves together. Elbows are in the way. Noses. Knees. But we find a comfortable position, with his arms around me and my head on his shoulder, and just like that, all the tension drains out of me. It was dumb of me to worry. This is my safe place. This is the best place I know, in his arms.

"Oh," he says, softly. "I _remember_ this. This is_ just_ the way I remember it. It's so clear in my mind." He sounds pleased, and faintly surprised. I'm so sleepy I can't answer, but I pat his side where my arm is resting across his middle. "Sleep well," he says.

And I do.


	6. Chapter 6: That Nightgown

**A/N: Uh, warning... minor smut and some curse words. I'd always wondered what Peeta did with the inevitable erections he surely experienced sleeping with the girl he loved. My guess is he gutted it out, not wanting to be dishonorable, but he is, after all, a teenage boy. So what happens after he loses his emotional brakes? I'm thinking something like this.**

Chapter 6: That Nightgown

_Peeta_

She has no idea of the effect she can have.

I've said it a million times, probably, and it's still true. If she had any idea, she wouldn't have shown up in the middle of the night wearing that nightgown, flying right into my arms.

I dunno, I might have had the same reaction if she'd shown up in body armor and six layers of sweats. What mattered most was that this was the first time she'd touched me in months, since she hugged me goodbye in the Capitol as she and Gale headed off to go kill Snow, probably meaning to die in the attempt. The past few weeks of being in Twelve together, sharing breakfast every day – she's not so much as touched my hand in passing the salt. She can barely even meet my eyes.

But that's the real _her,_ a bundle of contradictions. By now I've realized that the more deeply she feels, the less emotion she's willing to show. (Except with Prim, but Prim was a special case. There was never, never any threat that Prim would cease to love her.) Also, she finds it very difficult to trust, once she's felt rejected or unloved. I've seen her with her mother.

What her crying in my arms after dreaming that I was dead means, I don't know. I matter somewhat to her, but not so much that showing emotion is frightening? Or is she beginning to trust me again? Another contradiction. Which is, of course, pure Katniss.

I sometimes wonder how I know these things about her, after having been so confused for so long. But it's as if whole pieces of my past fall into place from time to time, and I _remember_ things: the sound of my father's laugh. The name of my second-grade teacher. The way Katniss sat either by herself or with Madge Undersee – who, as the daughter of the mayor, wasn't exactly prime social-status material. The way my friend Ty Dottring used to sit at the lunch table and rate all the girls in school for their attractiveness.

(Sweet, round, Delly was a six, bosomy Dorie Prester was a nine. Long-legged, elegant blonde Britta Smith was a nine, Madge an eight. Seam girls usually scored lower; they were thin and you could often see their hipbones. Ty said the only reason to date a Seam girl was that their morals were low, and you could sometimes get a "piece of skinny ass," as he put it. Katniss, I remember, scored a four. "Pretty eyes, but little tits," Ty had said. "Also, I took a point off because she looks like she might gut you with her skinning knife if you tried to touch her." I can remember feeling panicked when her name came up – the minute Ty said it I'd gotten a boner, and I didn't want anyone to know.)

Gah,_ high school_. Ty's gone now. And Dorie, and Britta and Madge.

I sometimes wonder whether I wouldn't have been better off falling for some uncomplicated, pretty girl. And then I dismiss that. Who would settle for mere prettiness, next to the force of nature that is the Girl On Fire? I just have to be tough enough to handle that, or die trying. I've come to accept it about myself: although at times I'd love to give up, I can't. It might be the best thing about me. Neither Old Peeta nor Fucked-in-the-Head Peeta could ever, ever give up, even if we knew it was best if we _did_ give up, and it's the one quality I haven't had to grasp for to make it part of Postwar Peeta.

I can remember telling Katniss and Squad 451 at least three times that they should just kill me. But I swear to God, if you think that was giving up – well, it wasn't. It was a plan to avoid the most awful things that could have happened. Giving up would have been letting my episodes happen so that I killed her, or other people. Giving up would have been letting the Capitol have me. Even if "kill me now" sounds like giving up, it would have been _by my choice, _the best choice in a world of bad ones. And therefore, _not_ giving up.

I had an episode earlier in the day, one of those flashbacks that freeze me into a terrified state. I'd cut my finger when peeling turnips for a stew. It hadn't hurt all that much, and it was only when I saw the drops on the kitchen floor, how they'd spattered and smeared, and how horribly beautiful it looked, that I just _lost it._ I had gotten stuck in memories of seeing my own blood on the floor of that torture room in the Capitol, my blood splashed across the white coats of the people wielding instruments there, Darius' blood making its way in tiny rivulets down the hall in front of my eyes, Johanna's blood snaking down her thighs after one of her sessions, even Gale's blood from that throat wound in the Capitol, oozing from under the bandage as we'd finally found some refuge in Tigris' shop...

I had come to myself around suppertime, sitting on the kitchen floor. Luckily, I'd already dropped the turnip-peeling knife in the sink, so there was no damage to the kitchen, bar a few blood smears on the floor. The fire in the stove had gone out, which was the only reason I hadn't burnt the stew, which consisted at that point of only dried venison and onions in broth. I'd restoked the fire, which was, as it always is, difficult (the trick is to focus on _the homely friendliness of a match flame_, not _children in an inferno_), and tossed the turnips, now darkened from exposure to the air, into the pot. I'd finally eaten dinner late at night when everything had cooked.

My nightmares had been bad – pretty average for a post-episode night. I dreamed of the Meat Grinder, and the flesh-melting ray that got Messala, and the Avoxes screaming underground, and then I'd gone on to dream that Katniss was setting the Holo to explode and planning to throw it at _me_, because I was Evil Mutt Peeta, primed to kill her. I woke up just as she aimed the Holo, and then immediately had to go and paint it the way I remembered it, not the way I'd dreamed it: Katniss throwing the Holo to save us from the rose mutts. Katniss _saving us_. Because that was the way it was. Real.

"Katniss saved us, that was real," I kept saying to myself as I outlined the scene on the canvas and started filling in the underpainting. "That was real. She threw the Holo at the mutts."

And suddenly then she was there, banging open the door and pounding up the stairs, and throwing herself at my chest. Crying because she'd dreamed I was dead. Seeking comfort from me (I've decided to take it that way).

And she was wearing _that nightgown_.

I should explain about that nightgown. First, it's clearly something that had belonged to her mother, because it's too big for her. And it's very girly, white cotton cloth printed with narrow, vertically-curling pink ribbons, which is just not Katniss' style_ at_ _all_.

Which says something, in itself, about Katniss: even though she's feeling abandoned yet again by her mother's relocation to District 4, she's wearing her mother's nightgown. I've noticed that she seems to find a lot of comfort in what I'd call talismans, for lack of a better word. For example, she manages to drag around her father's hunting jacket, and the family plant book, from place to place. I know she took a lot of personal comfort in that mockingjay pin, the one that became the symbol of the rebellion – and I think that fact ticked her off, too, because the pin had been intensely personal for her, before it got co-opted. Madge, who gave it to her, was one of her few friends. And mockingjays always remind her of her father. And once we realized that Madge's mother's twin sister had gone into the Second Quarter Quell with Haymitch, that pin became in some way a reminder of Haymitch as well.

I wonder if there was ever anything she carried around that reminded her of me.

But to get back to that nightgown, the other thing about it is that it's clearly very old and worn and soft, probably been washed too many times to keep track of, and the cotton is now nearly transparent.

That was the hell of a shock. For as many times as I've_ imagined_ seeing her body, and for all that I _did_ see of her in that set of (opaque) underwear in the Quell, after our blue suits had been shredded by the nerve fog, I'd never actually seen as much of her as I saw through that nightgown last night.

It was all I could do to keep her from realizing exactly what kind of effect it had on me.

And then she agreed to stay and sleep in my bed, which was something I hadn't dared hope for, and which resulted in negative blood flow to my brain. As I cleaned up the painting supplies, I wound up standing in the bathroom for a long time, letting water run over the brushes and firmly saying, "Chill out, you ingrate," to my importunate erection. Finally the ingrate relaxed, and I was able to go into my room and get into bed.

Into the bed with Katniss in it. Whoa. I think I did a lot of silent muttering to my procreative equipment, which calmed down about the time I realized that I was nervous about being in such close proximity to her.

And it took a little while for us to get used to each other again. I kept my thoughts off that soft, thin nightgown and what was under it (_just her skin, oh my God_), and focused on how much she needed my comfort, and how much I needed her to trust me. So we held each other, and then something just clicked in my mind, and I actually _remembered_ what it had felt like to hold her like this – no kissing, no caressing, just huddled together for warmth and security. That had been real. It was real now.

It felt wonderful.

She drifted off very quickly, arm draped over me, but it took me forever to get back to sleep since I kept seeing her under that nightgown every time I closed my eyes. Finally I stopped fighting it, and just looked at the vision of her stuck to the back of my eyelids. So beautiful. Her body is so plainly _her_, delicate yet strong as steel wire, thin but feminine, scarred but at the same time so perfect, so perfectly Katniss... the reality of it is completely outside the understanding of those people in that Capitol prison, and what they tried to make me believe. They were so, so _far wrong_.

I did feel slightly guilty for looking at her in such a sexual way, but I couldn't seem to stop, and of course by then the ingrate was demanding to be gratified. And I felt so tired, so wired, so abused by my flashbacks and my unreliable memory, so screwed up and unlovable and_ needy_, that I just... did it. Slipped my hand into my sleep pants and dealt with my need, as unnoticeably and silently as possible. It took no more than three minutes, maybe less.

There at the end, I failed to stifle a tiny groan, but it didn't wake her. She shifted a little, made a breathy humming noise, and merely tightened her arm around me before going back to sleep.

I'd never done that before, on those nights we'd slept in the same bed. I might spend a good portion of the night with an erection, but I'd always made myself wait for the shower, and privacy, before touching myself. And I hadn't slept in sticky underdrawers since the year I hit puberty, but I didn't care.

While my heart slowed to its usual tempo, I just held her and smelled her hair. Kissed her forehead, so softly. And after that I slept so peacefully I might have been a rock, deaf to everything.

Of course when I woke up she was gone. Of course. _Of course._ We do the old Katniss Dance of Intimacy: back and forth, a smile followed by distance, kisses followed by ignoring me. It's the way she is, and she won't change, but I suppose I've never stopped hoping that one day the step forward would not automatically lead to the step back.

Being angry at her is like being angry at the weather. She is who she is.

And now it's mid-morning, and I've slept through breakfast, too. Damn. It.

I get up and take a shower, but I'm logy and slow today, and I can't seem to find the mental wherewithal to do more than bake a half-dozen loaves of the simplest bread I can remember the recipe for. They're sitting on the cooling rack on the table when the kitchen door opens, and Katniss is standing there with three squirrels, all neatly skinned, and a bag of greens.

She comes in to show them to me. "These do for supper? A stew?"

"Sure," I say, trying not to goggle at her. She seems perfectly composed. Pleased, even. "Good day hunting?"

"Not bad, she says modestly. "Are you working cleanup crew this afternoon?"

I repress a shudder. "Not today."

Her eyes narrow a little. "You didn't sleep well last night, did you?" I don't answer. I start running water into the sink to wash dishes. "You've got bags under your eyes. Maybe – " she breaks off. "Maybe I shouldn't be so selfish. Maybe I should sleep in my own house instead of keeping you awake."

I shut off the water and turn on her so fast that she steps back, startled. "No. No, no, no, _no!" _ Her eyes have gone very wide now. I look down to realize I've grabbed her wrist. "Sorry. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she says. "I'm sorry too."

"It's not your fault," I say. I lift her wrist to see if I've bruised her, but there aren't even any red marks. I sigh. "I'm sorry. No, I didn't sleep well, not until almost dawn, and _then_ I slept great. I'm fine."

"I'm sorry I shut you out. Before, I mean," she says, looking to the side. "You know. When you first got here."

"Oh," I say. While I'm thinking what to say next, she goes on.

"I was just... I don't know. I don't... well, for one thing, I was rude. I never thanked you for the pri- for the flowers you planted. And I'm sorry. And I missed you." She looks down and bites her lip. "I missed you so much." And then she leaves without another word, just swings away from me and through the door.

Aargh, the next figure in the Katniss Dance of Intimacy. One step closer, one step back.

But I make stew with squirrel and greens and some canned navy beans I find on a shelf. And she and Haymitch come over and eat it with me. And Haymitch goes home after the wine is empty. And she sits across the table and looks at me, and I look back at her.

"Can I stay?" she asks in a soft voice, and I nearly melt right there.

"Please stay," I tell her.

So she stays. And we settle ourselves down in my bed, in modest loose clothing, faces washed and teeth brushed like good little children. I'm truly exhausted, and once we've arranged ourselves around each other again, I barely take three deep breaths before I'm just _gone_, floating on a peaceful lake of sleep.

I dream of a house, a big one, with room after room after room opening off a big center hall, each one decorated in beautifully-harmonized colors. Salmon pink and pale primrose yellow and deep crimson. Kingfisher blue and silver. Spring green and turquoise blue and ivory. A hundred hundred other combinations of loveliness. That is all, there are no other dreams.

I wake feeling well. It's early – I can see a pearly gray morning light between the curtains. She's gone, but there's a note on the pillow where her head was: _No_ _nightmares! See you for breakfast_.

Well, what do you know. One step forward, no step back this time.


	7. Chapter 7: Memory Book

**A/N: Recovery is a lot like the Katniss Dance of Intimacy (see Ch. 6): a couple of steps forward, followed by a step back. K & P make some steps toward wellness, with beginning to work on the Memory Book, but dealing with their feelings leads to some setbacks.**

**(Also, I know I'm slightly OOC here with a friendship between Prim and Peeta – but COME ON. There is just NO WAY that Peeta doesn't at least try to get to know the one person he's sure that Katniss loves. Especially when, given their personalities, I'm absolutely sure they would have gotten on like a house afire. Just because Katniss doesn't tell us about it in the books doesn't mean the friendship didn't develop.)**

**As always, I make no claim to owning THG.  
**

Chapter 7: The Memory Book

_Katniss_

Things are changing.

Spring is beginning to ripen into summer. It's hotter outside. I feel better on sunny days, I notice – I have more energy, I feel more like my old self.

It might be because I'm getting more sleep, since Peeta and I have started sharing a bed again for mutual comfort. _I_ sleep,_ he _sleeps, win-win. I notice that he's got a little more bounce to his stride these days too, and yesterday he confided to me that he hadn't had a flashback in a week.

I've been working on the plant book some. It feels right to work on it, to list some other food plants and the plant that my mother used to help treat her sadness. I had to call her to get her to describe it to me, and she was actually home instead of working at the hospital, and we talked. It's still awkward between us, and perhaps it always will be. I am not Prim. She's not Prim, either.

There is no Prim, and I feel her absence like a hole in my heart. No, bigger: a hole in the sky that eats the stars.

But anyway, after our brief conversation I go and find the plant from her description, and bring some home. Peeta draws it for me in the plant book. I write everything Mother told me about it, including the dosage and the preparation of a tea with its leaves.

I add black locust blossoms and the roots of dog violet to the edible-plants section. Peeta says he likes drawing these in; he loves the smell of locust blossoms. They look like clusters of white grapes on the branch, and they're only edible for a few days, before the blooms start to wilt. Once they turn yellow they're bitter and contain a compound that can make you vomit if you eat too much. I really only add the just-opened blooms to salads for about a week out of the year, so they're not particularly reliable as a food source, but I like them, and you can eat them, so in they go.

If I'm honest, I should admit that I really like spending time with Peeta doing, as he once said, "something remotely normal." He draws, I write, and we grow closer together.

More and more frequently I see that internal world behind his eyes. He's so... much _more_ than I am. He can do so many things I can't. Sometimes I think, and this is sort of depressing, that I will never have the capacity to really understand him. He sees things I don't, he knows how people feel when I don't. His brain's just that far ahead of mine in figuring out how things work, what they mean.

I mean... well, for example: if, before the Quell, Haymitch had just told Peeta not to ever be out of my sight, just that _single_ piece of advice, Peeta would probably have figured out why.

But this kind of what-if thing makes me sick with anxiety. What-ifs just drive me crazy. What-if Peeta hadn't been captured and hijacked? What-if Finnick hadn't died? What-if Prim had had a minor illness and not joined the other medical technicians in the Capitol?

One afternoon, while we're working on the book, pages spread out on the table in our parlor, Peeta runs across that list of things I wanted to remember about Prim: the color of her eyes, the smell of the back of her neck, things she'd said to me. He holds it up to me, a sweet sadness in his face, and says, "I miss her too."

"You didn't really know her to miss," I snap, suddenly so cut by the mental picture of Prim and Peeta with their blond heads together, that I'm instantly on the attack. _He is still the only boy I know who is even remotely good enough for her_. Ugh. And that thought still upsets me, twists inside my mind in a such a way that I wind up grieving for both of them as well as myself.

Peeta's eyebrows draw together. He's not angry, just worried. About me. He takes two steps toward me and pulls my arms free from where they're wrapped around my ribs. "Hey," he says, holding my hands. "You miss her a lot. Do you want to talk about her?"

Yes. And no. It just hurts so much that, although I know I should talk about her, in the same way that you really should pull out the tracker jacker stings, even though it hurts... well, it hurts _too much_.

But I'm intrigued (and sort of annoyed) by his saying that he misses her too. So I ask. "Why do you miss her? You didn't even know her."

He looks at me, probably to judge how stable I am. "Can we sit down?" he asks. We sit on the couch, and he keeps holding my hand. "Well, look. You know how I told you that pieces of my past sometimes just come clear to me? Being back here, doing normal stuff – sometimes I just begin to remember things. And the other day I was looking at the plants on the side of the house and seeing that they've grown some recently, and I was thinking that she would have liked them. She liked pretty things, Prim did."

"I know that," I say, impatiently. "How did _you_ know?"

He sighs. "Okay. When we got back from the first Games, and you weren't talking to me, remember that?" He looks suddenly worried again. "Wait. Real or not real?"

"Real," I admit. "I'm not proud of it... I was kind of awful to you, wasn't I?"

He looks past my shoulder, out the window, probably at something playing out in his mind. "Yeah. You kind of were." He looks back at me. "Did you realize then that I'd meant everything I'd said to you?"

I nod. "I didn't realize until the train home." I drop my eyes to our linked hands. "I felt awful. You kept making me feel like an awful person. Not on purpose, just by being a really good one."

"_No,_" he says, and I look up. The idea has upset him. He looks horrified.

"Never mind, then," I say hastily. "Anyway, it was... I couldn't deal with any of those feelings I had for you. I couldn't figure them out. And I couldn't talk to you until I knew how I felt. And at the same time, I didn't want to be with you, I didn't want to be with _anybody_. I planned that I'd never get married, and I'd never have kids, and it would not be fair to do that to you, and I didn't want you to grow to hate me. And Gale... he was already in such a temper, and he didn't understand, but I didn't either... it just – I couldn't lose him,_ too_. He was my _friend_."

"Okay. Okay," he says. "Don't get upset. We're okay. What do you mean, I'd grow to hate you? I'd never do that."

"If I could only give you part of me – wait, this is dumb. You were going to tell me about _her_." I glare at him. I try to pull my hand out of his. He won't let me. "Quit stalling."

He sighs. Massages his forehead with the hand that isn't holding mine. "Okay. Where was I?"

"Where I wasn't talking to you," I reminded him, still scowling.

"Right. Well, I couldn't... just stay away from you. I tried to, and I did the best I could. But I was baking all this bread, see, to keep from going crazy at night, and I had to give it away. So I started taking it around: to you, to Haymitch, to the orphanage. And sometimes when I would bring the bread, Prim would be here." He looks past my head again, as if he can see Prim there in the air, sitting by my right ear. "And I admit, I really wanted to talk to her. I'd seen her before, coming in to the bakery to talk to my dad about trading cheese. And she was such a little sweetie. So smart, so level-headed. And a great little smile."

He sighs again. "I don't know why, really. I was just intensely curious about her. What I knew about you from the Games – how you allied with Rue. And me. And how protective you were. I just wanted to get to know this person who was so important to you that you'd give up your life for her."

All during this conversation, I have been running his words through my private lie-detector. It doesn't work all the time – witness how I swallowed every single thing Haymitch said to me about not starting a rebellion! – but for certain people, Peeta being one of them, it's pretty accurate.

And he's not lying to me now, or stretching the truth. This isn't one of his shiny memories either. This is real.

"So sometimes when I brought bread over here, she'd be here too, and I'd see her bringing in the milking from her goat. And I'd say hi, and she'd say hi and smile at me, and we'd exchange pleasantries. I'd ask if the goat was doing well that morning, and she'd ask if my ovens were okay, and _fine_, it was dumb, but we were just being nice. And I'd ask her if you were doing well. Which bread you liked best. Whether she liked school. We talked, you know? She told me that she loved to go by the bakery to look at my cakes. She asked me once if she could see my prosthesis" – Peeta actually laughs at this point – "except she called it my 'fake leg.' Which made me laugh. Especially the way she poked it when I showed her, all enthusiastic and amazed that doctors could just make a leg like that, and that it would work. She was _fascinated_. And she didn't made me feel weird about it. She was just sweet like that. I could tell she was trying to figure out how it worked."

I can see them now in my own head: Peeta carrying hot bread, snow in his hair, and Prim lugging a milk pail, snow in her own blond braids. Talking. Smiling at each other. That thought about them being perfect for each other recurs, bringing with it the same horrible pain as it always does. _ Prim would have been much better for him than I am_, I think. _And he'd have been so tender with her_. _He wouldn't even have_ needed _all that patience he's got, if he was dealing with Prim. I'd have insisted they wait, though. She was too young_.

Such a _waste_.

"I wished," Peeta says wistfully, "that she was my sister. And then" – he darts a glance at me, as if to judge how this is going over – "of course, there was that proposal in the Capitol, and even though I knew you weren't happy about it, some part of me was happy that Prim really would be my sister some day."

I blink. I have managed to make myself forget, in the last few minutes, that Peeta had wanted _me_ back then. Of_ course_ he wasn't pining for a twelve-year-old.

"You okay?" he asks me.

I nod. "So you talked some." I might have guessed that they'd get on well.

"She came to see me," Peeta goes on, hesitantly. "In the hospital. In Thirteen. She was going to school, and she was excited about learning new things, and she was thrilled that they were going to train her to be a doctor."

"I know," I say, and my voice is so small. I remember that lighted match inside of me, that hope that she would get to be someone with a real future.

"She told me then..." he trails off, and takes a deep breath. "She told me not to give up on you. She said you were missing me so much that you'd sit up at night and worry about me."

"And what did you say?" I ask. I have never tried to find out many details about Peeta's stay in the hospital in Thirteen. Back then it was too painful and made me feel too guilty; now it doesn't seem to matter very much, because he's been through so much since then. We both have, I guess.

He shrugs. Looks away from me. I'm guessing that remembering the state he was in when he was in the hospital is as difficult for him as it is for me, but for slightly different reasons. "I didn't believe it. I didn't even want to hear it. It was – _hard_, you know? Dealing with the discrepancies between what I thought I knew and reality. Dealing with my confusion and my screwed-up memory. Of course you know."

We're silent for a moment before he speaks again. "I wish I'd listened to her. She was... sweet. She would have been such a great doctor."

"I know," I say, and my throat nearly closes. _Prim, I miss you so much_. "I just miss her so much. And she had all the best parts of all of us... Mother's healer's hands. Daddy's charming ways." I don't want to cry now. But I can't help it. "She was just... the best of us. And I'm forgetting her. Every day I lose another piece of her!" Sobs choke me. I barely feel Peeta's arms close round me and pull me to his chest, except that I know it's a safe place to cry.

When I stop crying, finally, he just pats my back until I can breathe again. "I know," he says, and his voice is so sad. "I know. It was such a waste. All of it. Even now, I'm not sure the rebellion was worth it, even to end the Hunger Games."

I nod. And right now, I'm rethinking that vote on one last Games, to be held with Capitol children as tribute. I'm not sure I'd vote yes now. Though I'm not quite sure I'd vote no.

I put my head on Peeta's shoulder and stare into the room, and the plant book comes into focus. I sit up so suddenly that I nearly crack him on the chin, and bounce off the couch.

"What?" he demands. "What are you – Katniss? What are you doing?"

I'm leafing through the plant book and thinking, _We need more paper_. I look at him, and say, "I want a book of Prim. I want to make a book for her. And for Finnick. And Rue."

His eyes get wide. "A memory book. With pictures. And details. So we don't forget, that's what you mean?"

I nod. "Yes. A book about everyone we've lost. Everyone." Our eyes meet, and there's this little spark of excitement in his. A book. Yes.

"We need paper," Peeta points out. And suddenly he flashes a grin at me. "It's not too late in the day. Go call Dr. Aurelius. _Right now_."

So I do. I forget all my usual self-consciousness on the phone, and I talk to the woman who answers the phone in Dr. Aurelius' office, telling her who I am and that I really have to talk to him, there's something important I have to tell him.

It's "ask for," not "tell," but does she really need to know? I decide she doesn't. And it doesn't matter, really, because within fifteen seconds she's putting me straight through to Dr. Aurelius, who seems thrilled to hear from me instead of having to track me down.

He thinks the book is a wonderful idea. He warns me that I – that Peeta and I, if he plans to work on the book with me, and Dr. Aurelius says it would be good if he did – will probably experience a lot of pain as we work through our memories of these people we've lost. And he says that we should call him if we want to talk about it. He'll send us some paper as soon as he can. On the next train, if he can possibly manage it.

It's only after I've gotten off the phone that I realize that grin on Peeta's face is the first one I've seen out of him for months. I can't even remember the last time I laughed.

A package arrives for me two days later. It's a box containing a bound leather book, quite large, that contains two hundred pages of heavy, good-quality paper sturdy enough to take artwork as well as handwriting. Dr. Aurelius' note encourages to work steadily but not exhaust ourselves, and it promises any number of blank books to follow, should we need them. That was nice of him.

We start right away, but not with Prim. That's too hard. We skip a number of pages at the front, for family, and then we start with Rue. Peeta paints her as I describe her, on her toes, leaning forward like a bird about to take flight.

I hassle Haymitch until he unearths a printed program from the 74th Hunger Games, one with each tribute's name and photo in it. It must have been done last-minute for the serious bettors, because it's even got training scores in it. This is going to be of tremendous help.

Of course, it is also a tremendous burden, remembering each each tribute in this kind of detail. On the way back to my house, where we're working on the Memory Book, I skim over the names, preferring still to refer to these tributes by their district and gender. Looking at this book is particularly difficult since, folded in the back inside the District Twelve pages, is a list of kills, mine and Peeta's, in Effie's obsessively neat handwriting, with these horribly... _hopeful_ notes, clearly also written by Effie. I hadn't realized how much she had been pulling for us.

I take two minutes to worry about Effie herself, and then I put the worry away for later. I only have so much space in my brain, and Effie can take care of herself. Even that blank-faced Effie I saw after the war was functioning enough to check schedules, so I imagine that she is probably okay.

Peeta's list is shorter than mine. First is the boy from District 9, for which Effie's note says, "Cornucopia bloodbath. D9 M tried to take knife from D12 M, fight for possession. Knife to heart." Then the girl from 6. Effie's note says, "D6 F stabbed by D2 M in stomach with sword. Intestines protruding, slow bleeding. D12 M went back to finish, opened veins in her wrists to speed death without much pain. Cried, then wiped blood on his face to hide it." Then Foxface from District 5, whose real name was Tollie. Effie's note says only, "Accidental poisoning."

I must hide this list from Peeta, at least for awhile. Until I think he can handle it. Maybe always. If he can remember this stuff without seeing it through Effie's eyes, so much the better.

I tell myself it is fine to skip what Effie had to say about the tributes whose deaths I brought about. I was there. I remember. I skim the names: Glimmer, the District 4 girl whose name was Minnia, Marvel, and Cato. But at the bottom, I can't miss reading Effie's note, almost scribbled, which says, "I can't stand this anymore." So Effie had a conscience after all...

And then we work on the Memory Book, for days and days.

Peeta cries a lot, without disturbing his work, which astounds me. I mean, he can just be sitting there, painting, with tears running down his face. I couldn't do it. When I cry, it's full-body. Racking sobs, wailing, the whole bit.

Some days he says he can't sit still, he's got to get out of the house, and he goes and works on the cleanup crew. I'll usually go to town, even if it's for a few minutes, just to check up on him, see if he's okay, and he's always pounding something: hammering nails on any new construction, or swinging a mallet to bring down unstable walls. Once he was having at a pile of rocks with a miner's pick, looking mightily frustrated, and that day he didn't want to talk when he got home.

I think that was the day of the District 6 girl.

And he has one flashback. A quiet one, the "fugue" type as Dr. Aurelius called it. He was painting that District 9 boy, and then he just slipped out of the chair onto the floor and sat there, shuddering and silent, for close to an hour. I tried to talk to him, but he behaved as if he couldn't hear me at all. Finally I took his head in my hands and kissed him, until he kissed me back. A little tongue of flame went rippling up between us, and I couldn't stand up fast enough. I tried to get him to eat something, but he said he couldn't. That he was tired and he just wanted to go to bed. It wasn't even dinner time, but he went straight to sleep like it was a refuge.

Well, I know how that is. I've done it myself often enough.

And I have my own troubles. When we get to Rue, I find myself not wanting to get out of bed. Peeta gets up and bakes bread in the morning, and keeps coming upstairs to check on me. "Are you going to get up?" he asks, worried.

"Eventually," I say, and then I roll over and go back to sleep. Two days he literally drags me out of bed so I can eat something. I can't write what I know about Rue, especially after Peeta paints her little brown face, singing to the mockingjays. So he makes me tell him what I want to write, and he writes it.

I just can't. And anyway, he's got nice handwriting too, careful artist's lettering.

The day after that, Peeta stomps himself into the woods (he hasn't gotten any quieter) and brings back that plant my mother used to treat her depression. He checks it with Greasy Sae and against the plant book, and they make me drink the tea – a whole cupful, twice a day.

It tastes _awful_. But after two days I feel less numb, and we move on to Thresh. Who is hard to write about, but not like Rue.

**(This chapter to be continued, but I thought I'd go ahead and post what I've got for now. Funny, I've gotten 8 through 10 and part of 11 written, but I'm really struggling to fill holes in the narrative here. Can't leave 'em unfilled, that'll cause plot problems later.)**


	8. Chapter 8: Memories and Flashbacks

**A/N: This is actually a continuation of Ch. 7, but it was getting too huge. So I just split it off. Chapters 9, 10, 11, and 12 are already written, so I should be able to post them fairly quickly. **

**A word about my take on Mrs. Mellark's background: I am deeply opposed to fictional characters who are bitchy and unpleasant for no reason at all, and I've been a little disappointed in the presentation of her character in particular. So here, I tried to postulate reasons why a woman would be such an awful person. I've read some fics that suggest she subjected her kids to repeated abuse, but I'm not sure I buy that scenario. However, she definitely rules the roost, and Peeta can't seem to please her at all... and I honestly think that is one reason Peeta is willing to put up with Katniss' tendency to be difficult. However prickly she is, however distant or snippy or sullen, he's _used _to that. Thinks it's normal. Wants to prove himself to her.**

**Feel free to disagree. I love reviews! As always, I make no claim to own THG.**

Chapter 8: Memories and Flashbacks

_Katniss_

Things are going not-badly when we've finished this first set of pages devoted to the tributes of the 74th. But I can't think who to focus on next. I can't do Prim, not yet. Nor Daddy. Nor Finnick. Not even Mags or Wiress.

So I ask Peeta who should be next, and he suggests maybe his family. This is not nearly as much work for me – it's all him, telling me stories about his brothers, writing down things his father told him, remembering recipes. He doesn't seem to want to talk much about his mother, though I notice that he's been working on a careful painting of her, in which she looks considerably nicer than the termagant I recall shrieking at me for looking in her trashcans.

And then one afternoon things get weird. He's done a big load of baking all morning, and the countertops are packed with corn muffins, cinnamon buns, dill-and-onion sourdough loaves, and whole wheat loaves with nuts and raisins.

I recognize the last recipe as the kind of bread Peeta had burned and tossed to me, that dreadful spring after Daddy was killed and we were starving.

We've just finished lunch, some cheese and apples and nuts, with the last of some biscuits he'd made the day before, but I suppose I've been eyeing the fresh bread too eagerly for him to resist trying to please me. So he gets up from the table and slices into a raisin loaf, stepping back to the table to hand me a still-warm piece.

"You like this kind, don't you?" he asks, a wistful sort of smile quirking up one corner of his mouth.

"I do," I say, and bite into it.

He busies himself packing up everything but the raisin loaves, and one dill-onion loaf that will be ours. They're still warm, and he's been careful to explain to me that if you cover bread while it's still hot, it gets soggy and molds too quickly. "Guess I'll take these around now. Before we start working, okay?"

"Sure," I say. I've been writing down some things Peeta's told me about his brothers, and I can do that while he's out taking the bread around to the people working on the cleanup crews. Since neither of us works regularly on them, he's taken to sharing bread with them to sort of make up for not being there every day. Nobody seems to mind. I don't know whether they're cutting us a break because of the Games and our "war service," as Gale's friend Thom once described our stint in Squad 451, or whether they just like the bread.

Or maybe they just like Peeta. He's hard not to like, even now when he's not quite himself. He's at his best with people, anyway.

While he's gone, toting all that bread in this massive basket that Thom's wife Mare wove out of vines and added leather shoulder straps onto for him, I clean up the lunch dishes and go work on the book.

I finish up the writing on the older of Peeta's two brothers. Banner Mellark, whom I don't remember well because he was four years older than me, was good-looking in a clean-cut, square-chinned sort of way. Just as blond, but taller than Peeta, he looks very confident in the painting Peeta's done of him. He actually looks a trifle smug, if you ask me, but given what Peeta's written down about him, he was good at everything, so maybe that's some justification. Banner, according to Peeta, was athletic, smart, conscientious, reliable, popular with girls, good with money, and perfectly capable of running the bakery single-handed. I doubt that last claim, and I doubt he was as nice to Peeta as Peeta remembers, but I don't think it would do any good to question this.

On the other hand, if Banner did take some of Peeta's knocks for him, as Peeta claims, maybe he deserves this glowing description.

Peeta's other older brother, Ryen, was apparently the joker of the family, always touching people – wrestling them, poking them, tickling them. Peeta says Ryen never took one thing seriously his whole life, and either he's exaggerating, or that excludes the baking, because I cannot imagine their mother putting up with shenanigans around her place of business. The picture that Peeta's painted of Ryen shows a broad-shouldered lad with curly blond hair and a devilish glint in his eye, but a smile that dares you not to join in. I remember Ryen as the only person in our school that Peeta couldn't beat at wrestling, and I vaguely recall that he was the one who pulled pranks on teachers, hiding their supplies or books, and then producing the missing articles with a flourish just as the teachers were about to lose their tempers.

I finish writing in the book on Ryen's page, adding his favorite joke (which I admit I don't think is all that funny) because it makes Peeta laugh before the tears come up in his eyes. I decide that I really do need another slice of the nut-raisin loaf, and I'm in the kitchen cutting it when Peeta comes back. I go ahead and slice the entire loaf while he comes in and takes off his sturdy boots.

"Want a piece?" I ask, waving it tantalizingly under his nose. He smiles and nods. So I put one on a plate for him and set it in front of him. I wipe off the bread knife and put it back into the drawer.

I've been thinking. "I always meant to ask you," I start, and his eyes meet mine. "You burnt the bread on purpose, didn't you?"

He doesn't pretend to not understand. "Those two loaves I tossed to you?"

"Yeah." I sit down. He looks back down, then nods. Pulls a bite off the slice and nibbles it.

"Did you know she would smack you?"

He shrugs. I wait. He sighs. "I knew she was having a really bad day. I mean, that was the _fourth_ time I had screwed up that day. And we'd had a bad week, too. We found a whole barrel of flour that had gotten eaten by moths. It was ruined. That meant we'd be out of flour early and not be able to make enough, and we'd have to knock down prices on the stale, and_ that _meant we might not have enough to eat the following week."

I can't say anything. My throat's closed up too tight. As usual, I haven't thought much about other people and their lives.

"I messed up a recipe of dill-onion bread that day, by putting aniseed in it by mistake. I let six pans of rolls rise too long, and we had to punch them down and let them rise again, and then shape them and let them rise again before we could even bake them. That was a lot of wasted labor that was my fault. And then I poured milk into the big vat without scalding it first, and then we had to get it out and scald it, and Mother had to clean out the big vat all by herself." He goes quiet for a minute. "She always said I tried her patience, but I _really screwed up_ that day. And I was just feeling so..."

I wait. I've found that he talks more if I leave a silence hanging.

"... I don't know, so rebellious and unlovable and – and angry. And I was especially angry with her, when I knew, I just _knew_, that you had nothing to eat. I mean, I noticed. At school. Your cheekbones got so sharp I could've cut my finger on them. And you walked so slowly. Trying to save your energy, I guess. And I thought to myself, ' How can Mother complain when people are starving?' I didn't even _think_ about how she worried about feeding her own boys."

He's long since abandoned his slice of bread. But the habits of a lifetime of being frugal with food die hard: he doesn't crumble it the way Effie would. No, he pushes the plate toward me. "Do you want that?"

"Not right now. I'll wrap it up," I tell him, and get up to find a cloth to put over the plate. I'll toast it for supper. I'm setting the plate back down when he speaks again.

"Her father was the mayor, did you know that?"

I turn around. "No, I didn't."

"He was," Peeta says, drawing things on the table with his finger. "Before Mayor Undersee. Before our time, of course."

"And how did the mayor's daughter wind up married to the baker?" I ask. I've never thought about this before. Mrs. Undersee had been a merchant girl, a friend of my mother's. And who would Madge have wound up with, if Twelve had not been firebombed? "Wait. I think I've heard the name. Paladin? Is that right?"

"Marcellus Paladin, that was my grandfather." Peeta's still not looking at me. "The way I heard the story from my mother was, he _screwed up_. Failed to offer some visiting Capitol dignitary a chair, or – no, he offered an inferior chair or some stupid thing like that, and it was construed as an insult. And then, he made an administrative decision that annoyed somebody in the Capitol. So they hauled him off on a train to explain it, and he didn't come back. They waited weeks, and he still didn't come back. And when my grandmother sent a letter to the Capitol asking for him, a new Mayor – Barnard, you remember hearing about him? The one that had a stroke on Reaping Day a few years later? – arrived on the train and kicked them out of the house. My grandmother died right there in the square of some heart trouble, with my mother kneeling on the sidewalk in the middle of their luggage, holding her.

"So she had no place to go. She had to sleep in the train station for a few days, until after her mother's funeral. And then when she tried to rent a room, nobody would take her in because she didn't have a job, and she couldn't be assigned a house in the Justice Building because, guess what, she didn't have a job. She had no idea what she was going to do. She'd never learned any skills, other than looking pretty and marrying some rich guy, hopefully in the Capitol."

I'm a little gobsmacked, thinking of 'the witch,' as Prim and Gale and I had called Mrs. Mellark, having nothing to do but be pretty. I just can't imagine her like that at all.

"And my father felt sorry for her, so he hired her as an apprentice baker and invited her to sleep in the bakery. In the storeroom, on a cot, so she could keep the ovens going. Which isn't strictly necessary, you know," he adds, turning his head just a tiny bit toward me. "But then he asked your mother to marry him, and she turned him down because she'd met _your_ father. And then people started to talk about him living under the same roof as my mother without a chaperone..." He trails off.

I go over and hug him from behind, putting my head next to his. He smells good, I notice for the four hundredth time. I know his smell very well: herbs, sweet spices, vanilla, flour, and warm skin, all of it adding up to this good Peeta-smell that I could probably pick out of a crowd blindfolded.

"It's okay," I tell him. "You don't have to talk about her right now."

"I know." We're quiet for what seems like a long time. And then, because he is brave, because he can face what hurts him, he starts talking again. Softly. Not bitterly, more like he's still trying to figure out things. "She was never a happy person. She complained a lot. And yelled a lot. Wanted things done her way, or else. She was not nice to you, not at all. And she was rude to any customer from the Seam."

"I noticed," I tell him. "None of us ever wanted to go into the bakery if she was there."

He shrugs a little. "You know what's weird? It was like she thought being poor was... catching. Like she could 'catch poverty' the way you 'catch a cold.' She never wanted us to even talk to anybody from the Seam, not even at school. Not if we could help it. Ryen thought he'd be funny one time and bring home this girl named Jean Gunn – did you know her?"

"I knew the Gunns." I'm still hugging him.

"For dinner. And Mother took one look at her and said, 'Girl, go home. You're not getting your claws in my son.' And that poor girl burst into tears, because all she knew was that she'd been invited to dinner. So she ran out, crying. And Mother went on this long... rant, I guess, about Seam girls and what immoral acts they'd perform to marry respectable boys, and how if we ever took up with Seam girls, we would be dead to her from then on. Father was livid. He didn't lose his temper very often, but he was angry with her that night."

He stops for a deep breath. I can feel his ribs move under my arms, and I wonder if I'm hindering his breathing, so I let go and sit down in the chair next to him.

_Peeta's mother hated me_, I realize. _Was that why she refused to move the family into this house in the Village? Was it me, was it that Peeta said he loved me?_

"I think," he says, not looking at me, "I think she was afraid of being poor. I do." He pauses a minute. "I mean – most people that actually are poor are afraid of specific things. Like there won't be enough to eat. Or that they can't buy medicine, or shoes, or coal or firewood. Mother was just afraid of _being poor_. I sometimes wonder what happened to her in that train station."

I can't stand to not be touching him when he's in so much pain, and I put my arm around his shoulders. "It upset me when you told us what she had said before you left for our first Games. You know, that there might be a District Twelve winner, and she didn't think it would be you. I just couldn't imagine a mother saying that."

"Well, I disappointed her early and often," Peeta says grimly. "She'd wanted a girl, and I wasn't a girl. Then she'd wanted a boy who would do everything she wanted and take her side all the time, and I didn't do that. And besides, I was kind of a crybaby when I was little. Sensitive, you know? I'd find a dead frog and be all upset that it got smushed, and she'd swat me on the butt for crying over the stupid frog when there was the bakery floor to be swept, and _then_ she'd hand me the broom."

Ugh. To think I had spent any time at all feeling jealous of the baker's kids. No one ever hit me. If I misbehaved, I got a stern talking-to from Daddy, and that would always leave me so ashamed that I'd behave.

"You know," Peeta is saying in a considering voice, "I think the one thing that upset her more than poor people was the idea of _screwing up_. Maybe because her father had screwed up so badly, and it left them with no protection whatsoever... she was always yelling at us to think before we acted."

"So she hated me, didn't she," I say. I don't know why this makes me feel so awful. I already knew she hated me. "That's why they didn't move into your house in the Village."

He nods. "She was not exactly... calm... on the subject of my, uh, 'lowering myself to Seam level.' It didn't seem to matter to her that you saved my life. And I suppose it was worse because she'd figured out who your mother was."

Suddenly he's all business. He moves so that my arm falls off his shoulder, he gets up from the table. "I need to start dinner." He won't let me help. I try not to feel rejected. _He just needs some space_, I tell myself. _To get that Witch Mother of his out of his head_.

I set the table while Peeta does this complicated thing with pieces of rabbit, and flour and eggs and buttermilk, and seasoning. Then he fries the rabbit in his big iron skillet, and it smells wonderful. While it cooks, he slices up a loaf of dill-onion bread, and cooks a small pot of wild carrots and parsnips, with dill and a little butter.

I manage to pour water without spilling it. I really should ask him to give me cooking lessons. The house is warm from cooking, so I go and open the kitchen window a little wider.

Dinner is excellent. It's much simpler and heartier than Capitol meals, but there's something about the combination of flavors that makes me think of Capitol food anyway. We eat the _entire_ rabbit, and all the vegetables, and about half of that loaf of bread. I tell him how much I'm enjoying the meal, but he only smiles absently and goes back to his silent contemplation.

I insist on doing the dishes myself, but he insists on drying them and putting them away. I'm starting with the last few bowls from his bread marathon of the morning, and Peeta's drying our drinking glasses, when there is a sudden and vicious buzzing in the room. Several yellow-and-black wasps are drifting around in the room in that aimless, unpredictable way of theirs, making more noise than you'd think animals that size ever could.

Peeta spins around, eyes wide, and I hear his sudden intake of breath. He is instantly terrified. "Go in the parlor," I say. I fish around under the sink for his flyswatter. I don't find one.

Peeta doesn't move. He's shrunk back against the counter, tense, still holding a clean glass. "_Peeta. _Go in the other room. I'll get rid of them." I grab his arm. He yanks it away from me, and the buzzing gets louder.

Wasps are nervous. They don't like sudden movement.

These aren't tracker jackers, just plain wasps, but as I look at Peeta's face I see that it doesn't matter to him. His pupils are very small, and he's pale and sweaty, and he's got a death grip on that drinking glass. "_Help_," he says to me.

"I'll get them out." I turn around and snatch up two kitchen towels to swing at the wasps, to try to maneuver them out of the open window. "Out you go, wasps," I say, scooting two of them toward the window. Peeta gives a sort of strangled cry behind me, and I turn around to see one of the wasps hovering close to him.

He throws the glass at it. It smashes on the floor, and I'm very glad to realize we're both still wearing shoes.

"Calm down, Peeta," I say to him, trying not to yell and upset him further. "They get nervous when you're nervous. Just be still. I'll get them out." But he must not be listening to me, because he looks even more terrified.

I actually manage to catch that wasp hovering near him with the edge of the towel when I swing it. The wasp lands on the floor, and I step on it. Another wasp lands on the still-hot stove, and makes a horrible buzzing noise as it succumbs to the heat. The final wasp lands on the table and I smack it good and hard with the towel, so that it too falls to the floor. I finish it off with my shoe as well.

And I turn around to see that Peeta, eyes glassy with too much blue in them, too little pupil, has seized a big kitchen knife and is holding it out in front of him. "Get away from me," he snarls.

I hold my hands up. "The wasps are gone. You're safe, it's okay."

"But _you're_ here. You _mutt!_ Get away from me," he continues to snarl. Takes one step toward me. "You killed her, didn't you?"

I don't know what to say. I don't know what he sees in his hijacked mind.

"You killed my parents – _you_ dropped the bombs on them! You killed my whole _family!_ Get away from me!" He takes two more steps toward me, and he might not be in control of his mental faculties, but that knife hand is absolutely rock steady. "You evil mutt," he snarls again.

He doesn't even look like himself.

"Put the knife down, Peeta," I say, in a voice of reason. For answer, he slashes it in the air between us, a ruthless rush of noise that tells me I am definitely not safe, not if he decides I'm going to attack him. I realize that what's worked in the past, with kissing him out of a flashback, is not going to work now. He won't let me get near him.

"Okay," I say, holding my hands up. "Okay, I'm going. I won't hurt you. It's not real, Peeta. Not real." I remember that he's got a longer reach than I do, that he outweighs me, that's he's immensely strong. And that he killed two tributes with a knife in the arena – that District 9 boy, and Brutus in the Quell.

If he does get to me with the knife, I'll be dead before he even remembers where he is. Except that he doesn't seem to be trying too hard to get to me, more trying to keep me away from him.

"You bitch, you _killed _her," he hisses between his teeth, and swings the knife in a fast, wicked arc. There's still a few feet between the end of his reach and my body, but two more steps will change that. "Get away from me!"

I turn and run through the house to the front door. He doesn't follow. I slam the door behind me as I burst out into the evening light.

It doesn't open again. I run for my own door. On my front step, I stop and check to see if he's running after me. He isn't. There are crashing noises coming from Peeta's kitchen, and I can hear muffled cries. He's not coming after me.

He's _got _to be calmed somehow, before he hurts himself.

I dash to Haymitch's kitchen door and open it. Haymitch can go get him, make him calm down. It's dark inside Haymitch's house, and I stumble around until I find him in the kitchen, snoring like a hog at the filthy table.

I check to see that he's not holding a knife, which he's not, and then I shake him for all I'm worth. As usual, it doesn't work, and I fill a pitcher with cold water from the tap.

He comes awake, spluttering water and spitting curses.


	9. Chapter 9: Knife

**A/N: Shortish chapter here, just a fill-in between two humongous ones. Mostly short because I've had a hard time catching the flavor of Haymitch's brain. Warning: lots of swearing, including the F-bomb. Reviews are appreciated!**

**As always, I make no claim to own THG.**

Chapter 9: Knife

_Haymitch_

The Mockingjay's favorite way to wake me is with a pitcher of cold water. Vindictive little thing.

She's all in a panic because the boy's in a flashback and told her to get out before he took a swing at her with a knife. (I feel slightly guilty. Wonder where he got that habit from?) Apparently, he missed.

Which I could have guessed, anyway. The kid can _use_ a knife on a human being – I've seen him do it – but he really hates it, and in any case he's far more inclined to be protective than aggressive. The kicker to that little fact might be that if he thinks he needs to protect himself, he might lash out at her. On the other hand, I think he'd still miss on purpose, unless he was completely insane with terror.

Which, I admit, could happen. Fucking Capitol and their fucking endless screwing with people's brains. Fucking _bastards_. Best kid I ever knew, and he's never going to be the same.

Of course, no Victor ever is. Her head's just as screwed up as his, and as much as mine, but we're all different. We respond to the pressure differently.

But anyway, this evening she's in such a fit, begging me to make sure he can't hurt himself, that I get up and wiggle my feet into shoes. I'm groggy enough to need to stick my head under the faucet in the kitchen sink, too, but I ignore her yapping about it. I tell her that under _no _circumstances is she to come over there, or even to leave my house until I get back. I dry my hair somewhat with a kitchen towel, and walk over to see how bad off he is.

I go to the kitchen door and look in. The kitchen's a frigging mess, with dishes and glassware broken on the floor, and something that looks like dried weeds too.

One tiny part of my brain wonders if the boy has discovered the power of certain herbs for making the world go away... and if he's got any extra he might share... and then reason reasserts itself. Where in Panem would he have gotten a supply? Besides, that's not his thing.

Not really mine either. My drug of choice is alcohol. Always has been. Probably always will be. I know these two are on a "face your demons, heal your mind" psychiatric kick, but for myself, I know better. You don't try to dry out _and_ face your demons at the same time. And you don't just go off the booze after nearly thirty years, either. Just doesn't work, demons or no demons.

Of course, I'm just assuming about the no-demons scenario. Because I sure have them.

I open the door and go in. Call the boy's name. No answer. It's starting to get dark in here, even though the boy seems to have sworn off curtains. There's not a single pair up anywhere in this house. I like my curtains. (How the hell _else_ are you going to sleep during the day, if there's all that sunlight coming in?) I call Peeta again.

I notice a couple of dead wasps on the floor. Aha. That was probably the trigger. He's been doing pretty good lately, ever since they started working on that book together. Well, since they started sleeping together, actually. No flashbacks. The occasional smile. Plus, there's this _thing_ I noticed between the two of them recently, the way they'll sort of accidentally-on-purpose bump into each other in the kitchen, and the way they look at each other when the other one's not looking back. Normal boy-girl stuff, actually, but it's new behavior out of _her_. Before now, you'd have thought she didn't have any girl-parts, way she acted.

They're not doing the mattress dance, not yet – and Effie might have bought that secret marriage crap, but you could just look at them and tell they were both still virgins – but I'd lay odds it's not going to be all that long before they'll be at it. And it's going to hit them with the force of a hundred summer storms, all at once.

Oh. He's in the living room, backed up into the corner in a crouch, holding a big butcher knife from the kitchen. He bares his teeth at me, which is just about the most pathetic thing, because I know he's not going to come at me. He's playing Big and Scary, which he definitely isn't right now.

"Damn, boy," I say. "Put that knife down."

He doesn't move.

I walk toward him, and he swings the knife. _Whoosh_.

His aim sucks, but _okay_, he's pretty fast, and maybe I was a little hasty in saying he wasn't Big and Scary. I still don't think he'll actually hurt me, but I'm not so fast as I used to be, and I don't much favor my odds for walking straight up to him and getting him to drop the knife without him thinking I'm attacking him.

I think a minute.

"You have trouble with wasps?" I ask, and he turns his head looking for them. "They've been bad lately. I think you may have a nest under your eaves, too." _Gotta get that thing down_, I remind myself. _Maybe Thom can do it_.

He shudders, but I'm watching the point of the knife. It never moves. If his wrist is rigid, the hand might be vulnerable to a blow. Yep, rigid wrist. Whole arm's rigid.

Hell, his whole body is rigid.

This is not necessarily bad for me. It's best to stay in a loose stance in a fight, because your opponent can easily distract you and come at you at a different angle if you're locked into one stance. Of course, he's got the corner behind him, and that changes things. I really won't be able to come at him at a different angle.

_Think, Abernathy_.

Of course: _her_.

"She's not here, you know," I tell him. "You scared her off." I'm rewarded by a snarl and a twitch of his arms. "You want to see?" I point to the window. His eyes skate there for just a second, and then he's back to me._ Fuck. Even if this works, I'm still going to have to hit him, just to get him to drop the knife._

"Really. You chased her off. Go look. She's not out there." _Katniss, do __**not **__be outside_, I silently order her. I go to the window – carefully, two arms' lengths from him.

I'm actually surprised to see that the idiot girl has taken one of my orders for once. I gesture out the window. "See for yourself."

He eyes me sidelong, suspiciously, and then turns his head to look out the window. "See?" I ask again. "She's not there. You scared her. You can ditch the knife now." I'm watching his face and keeping the knife in my peripheral vision as best I can, and I see the tip of the knife dip just a little bit. I think so, anyway.

"She's not there, is she?" I point to the front yard. "And she's not in the house. I checked."

"Where?" he says, hoarsely.

"My house," I tell him. "That's why I came over here. Because we're safe here."

He frowns. The tip of the knife quivers. _Tactical error_, I think. _I need to make him remember she's not a threat to him_. "She's safe over there. And you're safe over here. Nobody is going to hurt anybody else."

He looks confused. "Who? Who is safe?"

I gather myself. I wish, fruitlessly, for the speed of my youthful body. "She is," I say. "Katniss." I brace.

And he comes for me. Fast even on that fake leg of his. He grabs the front of my shirt with his left hand, tries to shake me. "KATNISS IS A MUTT!" he shouts right into my face. "Don't let her touch you!"

I grab his right wrist with both hands and bend it back. He fights me – _goddamn_, his right hand's strong! – but I was quick enough to get a good grip, and I force the wrist back, and I force it back and back, and he drops the knife. I step on it, and hit him in the jaw, hard.

It's not enough. He roars at me, some wordless angry confused noise, and I hit him again in the same place, as hard and as fast as I can. And this time he goes down. He knocks into the low table on his way to the floor, and it falls sideways.

He's on the floor now, and as I watch his eyelids flutter twice and then fall closed. We're okay now. He'll be okay.

I'm panting for breath now, and my hand hurts like the fucking blazes, and _damn_ it, do I need a drink.

I lean down and pick up the knife. Take it into the kitchen and put it away. I don't worry about it anymore, because once he passes out, he never wakes up violent. Never. He'll come to and be absolutely sick with guilt.

I go back to the living room, turn on the lights, and kneel down to check on him. He's breathing fine. I lift each eyelid to see whether his pupils will react to light, which is something Dr. Powers showed me last week, in case I needed to know. The pupils are fine. His heartbeat is fine.

I position the boy so he's lying mostly on his back, head to the side. I get one of the throw pillows from the sofa and put it under his head.

His left palm has been bleeding at some point with a hair-thin knife cut, but it looks clotted and dry now. I figure there's nothing I can do for that. I debate covering him with the blanket from the back of the couch, but it's a warm night. Summer's coming in. I should probably stay with him, too, but I can't. I'm too angry. I need a drink too bad. I won't be able to keep a good watch on him.

So I go into the study – all the Victors' houses are the same, and how funny it is that after twenty-four years of living all by myself in one, I got neighbors – and call Dr. Powers.

I explain. I ask if she can come sit with him for awhile, because I can't, because I have to go drink myself insensible at the earliest opportunity.

(Look, it's either that, or go insane. I hate the fucking Capitol and their fucking disregard for human life or its quality, and fuck them and their mothers flying through the air for ruining that boy, the best kid I ever knew. The most _human_ human being. He will _never_ be the same. And I hate them for ruining me, too. I just wanted to live out my life with my weird little adopted family here, but I have to _deal_ with this shit, the way they have totally screwed all three of us in the head. _Fuck_ them.)

She says she can come check on him for awhile. I remember to thank her before I hang up.

She's a nice woman. Sensible. The boy told me that her husband had been a soldier back in Thirteen, and that he hadn't made it back from that final offensive push to the Capitol, and she was kind of a wreck about it. It's one reason she's here.

I'm glad she's here in Twelve. Because I can't look after the boy properly, and the Mockingjay can't either, not right now.

I leave the light on for Dr. Powers, and I go home. Tell the girl that he's passed out, tell her to go home. I can't be sociable right now. Get out that bottle of whiskey that Effie sent me a few months ago and crack the top. Whiskey's good, especially if you can add a little water to it – it tastes like burnt sugar and woodsmoke in the air, it tastes the way good damp soil and leaf mold smells – and I'd been saving it for a special occasion, but it's the only full bottle I've got in the house, and I want very much to be drunk very fast tonight, so I just pound down as much of it as I can in one gulp.

It feels like fire, burning its way down my gullet, and that makes me want to drink it even faster. _The girl on fire_.

She's pretty pissed off at me right now, but I ignore her screeching. "He's fine," I say. "He's safe now. Dr. Powers is checking on him. Go home." She screeches some more, about how can I leave him alone when he's passed out, and what about the knives?

"Damn it, leave me _alone_, Katniss," I say, and the fact that I've used her actual name shuts her up. She looks shocked. Tears run down her face, and that makes me think of the last time I saw Effie Trinket.

That's right, that's yet another reason I fucking hate the fucking Capitol. Harmless, prim, fashion-addict, schedule-obsessed Effie Trinket, signing on for the rebellion because she was sick of sending tribute after tribute after tribute off to die. And maybe because she trusted me a little, too, who knows? Effie, fresh out of prison, jobless and frightened the last time I saw her, afraid to leave the Capitol, crying all her makeup off. _Fuck them_.

I drink faster.

I don't notice when the Mockingjay leaves.


	10. Chapter 10: Tension

**A/N: Long chapter here. Peeta's having a Very Rough Time, and consequently, Katniss is too. I do see them as beginning to depend on each other, to be able to bring each other out of these adverse emotional states. It's tough because neither one of them is really well, and I don't think either one of them will ever be quote-unquote "normal." _Functioning_ is what we can hope for, and they're making progress in that direction.**

Chapter 10: Tension

_Peeta_

I can't find her.

She didn't sleep here last night, as far as I can tell. (Actually, I don't know where I slept. Or if I slept.) I can't blame her after what happened, either. I feel literally sick with guilt.

I mean, it wasn't my fault that the Capitol hijacked me. It's not my fault that I find myself, over and over, in flashbacks to that cell and those doctors and that needle prick that brings such horror. Or to the sound of Johanna and Annie screaming and screaming and screaming down the hall. Or to the sight of all those children swallowed by flames. Not all the flashbacks are hallucinations, but the hallucinations are the worst. Maybe that's because I'm never sure whether the ground is going to open up under me and suck me into some nightmare world.

I can't prevent the hallucinations themselves, and obviously I can't help what I'm hallucinating. What sickens me is that I can't control where my mind goes, or what my body does when my mind is somewhere else.

The fear never stops, not really. I just have times of respite from it. And I notice that when I'm experiencing other emotions, I'm even more susceptible to the fear.

A hallucination makes me panicky and violent. A plain flashback is different. When I fall into one of these, I can't move, can't talk. Haymitch and Katniss tell me that I just sort of go... away. Only Katniss has had any success in pulling me out of the fugues, as Dr. Aurelius called them. Nobody has been able to pull me out of a hallucination. I'm truly dangerous in that state. If I can stop it before it gets really rolling I can stay out of the hallucination. Intense physical sensation – pain or cold, or the exquisite pleasure of her kisses – can keep my mind present in my body. But once I'm inside a hallucination, I'm pretty much stuck in Berserk Mode until I pass out.

Those wasps... If she'd been able to induce me to stay in my body, instead of swatting them, I might have shaken it off – but there's a _very_ narrow window of time involved there, and I didn't even have time to tell her what was about to happen before it rolled over me in one frightening wave.

It was Beast-Mutt-Katniss that took my mind last night, eight feet tall, fanged, with four-inch talons for fingers. That one terrifies me to the point that I'm almost guaranteed to lash out physically.

Even though the hallucinations are at least getting less frequent, they're still scary. For instance, I could put my real fist right through Katniss' very-real face. Or choke her. Or cut her throat with a bread knife. Or any of a thousand things that could end her, ruin her, break her. And that_ terrifies_ me.

Because who else can pull me out of these episodes? (Haymitch, maybe. Maybe. If he's not drunk. I don't like my chances there. Dr. Powers, who seems to like me? I don't know.)

And because, of course, I love her. Still. Always. The one thing I have left that's really worthy of the effort it takes to keep living.

And so, when I have bandaged the long shallow cut on my palm (what the hell did I _do_?), and cleaned up the scattered herbs and broken glass (I don't remember breaking it) in the kitchen, and righted the coffee table, and ascertained with relief and gratitude that I have not wrecked anything in my painting room, I go looking for her. To apologize, to beg forgiveness, to make sure I didn't really hurt her.

She's not in my house. She's not in Haymitch's, either, and he's passed out in his pigsty of a bedroom, snoring. I didn't think she'd be there, but I figured I'd rule it out first.

She's not in her house, either, though, and I'm starting to worry a little. I go through the rooms, calling her name softly in case she's sleeping. But she's not sleeping. She's not anywhere here. She likes to go hunting in the mornings, but she usually wears her old worn comfortable boots, and those are still standing by the kitchen door. I notice that her game bag is slung over the back of a chair. Okay, now I'm starting to worry a lot.

There's a thump as Buttercup jumps down from the kitchen chair he's been sunning in and saunters over to yowl at me. I don't know why Katniss hated him so much, except that perhaps she felt a little jealous of Prim's affection for him? I'm probably overthinking that, or projecting, or something. I mean, _I'm_ a little jealous of Buttercup because Katniss allows him to sit in her lap and be petted now. I fill his water bowl and pet him a little, and I actually go so far as to put down a bite or two of dried turkey for him, which she would give me the stink eye for doing.

"Where'd she go, Buttercup?" I ask him, crouching down and looking into his amber eyes. "Where's Katniss?"

I almost miss the sound that follows my question. There's a sort of rustle coming from the first-floor bedroom that was Mrs. Everdeen's, which I know Katniss avoids because it hurts her so much that her mother has abandoned her yet again. I'd only given the most cursory look around in there.

Now I go down the hall and look in. Nobody in there. But there's a closet. I stand still and listen. No sound. I get down on hands and knees and go over and ease open the closet door as quietly as I can.

Here she is. I let go of the breath I didn't realize I was holding, and take a good look.

She's wrapped in a ragged pink blanket that I know without asking once belonged to Prim, and her hair is a straggly mess, and she's shaking. Staring right through me as if I am not here, though she's blinking at the sudden light. "Katniss?" I say softly. No response. I can see that the muscles in her neck and arms are so taut that she herself might be a drawn bow.

She doesn't react to me, which I guess is both good and bad. She's not screaming and running away, but her mind is not 100% in her body, either.

I sit down on the closet floor facing her, and pull the door mostly closed behind me. I take one of her clenched fists and hold it. "Katniss, it's me. Katniss?" I don't expect her to answer me, but I'll keep trying. "Katniss," I say again. I hold the fist and wonder if I can do something to ease the tension in her body.

_I could massage her hand_, I think. So I do. I gently work the kink and clutch out of her hand. It takes a long time, but what else have I got to do today? And what better task could I have than taking care of her, anyway? Once I've got that first hand unknotted, I rest it on my leg as I work on the other hand, and sometime during this activity I notice that she's breathing more deeply. Not fully aware yet, but she seems less locked inside herself. By the time I've gotten her hands and forearms relaxed, her eyes are focusing on me and she's stopped shaking. She can't, or won't, talk yet.

"Hey," I say, and hold both her hands. "Hey, are you back with me?"

She says nothing, but her expression lightens just a little, and the dread I was feeling before has eased a little too. She's not afraid of Evil Mutt Peeta. She's letting me touch her and talk to her.

"Katniss," I say, and I can't help it, I reach up to stroke her hair.

And this _floors_ me: she actually leans her head toward me a little, as if I am a source of comfort she can't resist. I stroke her hair and feel how tense her neck is under it, so I massage it, one-handed, and she leans farther over to me. I massage, she leans, and somehow her head comes to rest on my collarbone. I feel her exhaled breath.

The tightness in her neck releases only slowly because I'm afraid to put much pressure on the muscle, but it does release. It might be half an hour later when I'm moving my hand down from that knot at the base of her skull to the lower part of her neck, and she whispers my name into my chest.

I breathe deep, feeling my own shoulders relax. "Yeah, it's me. Did I hurt you? Last night, I mean?"

"No," she says, sounding surprised. "Of course not. You made me go away so you wouldn't." I close my eyes briefly in relief. "That feels nice," she says.

"Good," I say. "I'm sure it's due to all that practice kneading dough, but I have excellent massage skills." _She's talking to me. Good sign. _She mumbles something I don't catch. "What's that?"

"You smell good," she articulates. I start working along her shoulder. This would be easier if she were facing away from me, but that seems less important than the way she's leaning into me, as if she trusts me.

"Oh?" I ask, and keep working the shoulder muscle. It loosens a lot faster than that knot just under her skull.

"You smell like yourself." She sighs again, and flattens her hands out where they're lying on my thighs. Flexes them like she's gotten them out of storage and can't remember how she's supposed to make them do things.

"Hey, I showered," I tell her, switching hands and starting to work her other shoulder.

"I can tell," she says back. I'd love to be seeing her eyes, but I'll take this gentle way she's talking to me. It's slow and tentative, what's coming out of her, but it's coming. Without my forcing it. She's actually volunteering to tell me stuff, which normally bothers her. Or scares her, maybe. "You smell good. You smell like you."

"What do I smell like?" I ask her, not only because I want to keep her talking, keep her with me in the moment, but also because, well, I'm curious. I know what she smells like to me: on good days, she smells like outside, like the woods she's been walking around in, all fresh and green. She can smell like herbs or fruit sometimes, if she's been gathering them. Sometimes when she's been hunting I can smell animal pelt and blood on her hands as well even after she's washed, and this is not a pleasant smell but to me it means she's feeling pretty good, pretty normal. Usually the smell of blood disturbs me, but the animal-hair smell added to it takes it out of the category of wrongness and puts the blood-and-animal smell into the category of potential food. And she has her own body smell, too, a sweet clean musky odor that says "girl" to me in all the most basic ways. I notice it most when she's been sleeping.

On bad days she smells of sweat and unbrushed teeth and something oddly metallic and sour. I don't want to know what I smell like on my bad days.

"You know," she tells me, and I hear her sniff my chest. "Dill and cinnamon and flour. Sometimes paint. Like fear sweat if you've been dreaming or flashing back." She sniffs again, and I can feel my body going,_ hello there_. I tell it to shut up. I rub both her shoulders under the blanket, and she sighs before she goes on. "But under that, you just smell like... you. Warm. Manly."

I can't help it, my body reacts to that. _Manly_. I have to shift around a little to disguise it. "Here," I say. "Want me to do the rest of your back? You'll have to turn around some."

"Yeah," she says. She moves as stiffly as if she's been sitting in the same place for hours, which she probably has been, but she turns sideways slowly, so I can reach her back. I ease the blanket down so I can get to her back.

Just as I'm thinking that it is pretty pitiful of me to get turned on by simply touching the clothed, nonsexual parts of a female body, never mind that it's _her_ female body, I feel her sigh and really relax. "Nice," she says, rolling her head around on her neck. "I haven't had a massage for a long time." She goes very still for a minute, and I'm wondering who did that for her in the past.

It might have been Gale. I'd hate him, but he's so important to her, and to be perfectly honest, he's a decent guy. And he cares for her. I'd be less jealous of him if he weren't so good-looking, but there it is. No matter how often I remind myself that I don't get to dictate who she loves, or how much, I'm jealous. Never mind that he's not actually living within eight hundred miles of us – or that_ he_ never tried to kill her – I'm sick with jealousy. And because I am a sick jealous person, I go ahead and ask if he used to do that for her.

"No, Prim did." We're both silent for a minute. I move back to her neck, trying to get the residual tension out of that knot. "It was right after they got you out of the Capitol," she says, and her voice is a little shaky. "I was in that scanning machine thing and it was cold." _After you tried to strangle me_, she means.

It occurs to me that she's very vulnerable in this position. "Doesn't that frighten you?" I ask. "My hands on your neck?" She doesn't say anything. "Because I tried to kill you that way once?" I add dryly. I put my hands in my lap. Now I've frightened myself.

She doesn't answer at once, but she turns around and tries to look at me in this semi-dark. "That was different," she says, wary. She pushes the door so that it opens a little farther, and mid-morning light comes in. "You weren't really you."

"I don't remember it." I don't. But I've seen the tape. Apparently Coin, or Plutarch or Fulvia or somebody, was thoughtful enough to have a camera available to record our reunion after the Quell and the kidnapping and rescue – there in Thirteen's hospital as I was regaining consciousness. I guess they'd thought it would be a smack in the eye of the Capitol to air a little clip of the Star-Crossed Lovers of District Twelve, together again, having survived the machinations of the evil Capitol. It probably would have been, too, a nice little nanny-nanny-boo-boo nose-thumbing for Snow.

Except that what the tape showed was Katniss, face alight with a smile so real and radiant that it made my heart turn over while watching the playback, her arms reaching out to me, running toward me with joy in every line of her body. And me. Mad with rage and fear, doing my very best to choke her life out of her. If I'd been at my full strength, I'd have managed to. It was, instead, a near-triumph for the Capitol.

Haymitch had showed that tape to me after she'd shipped out with Squad 451. "You be careful," he said to me, his face hard. "You remember who the enemy is, boy." It had been excruciating to watch. Only reminding myself that I was pumped full of tracker jacker venom at the time seemed to help, and I remember thinking, _I'm_ _not like that. That isn't really me_. And then later with my squad, watching myself on Capitol TV trying to smash her head in with the butt of my gun, kicking Mitchell off me and into the net trap, crazy and hijacked, totally out of my head... it made me sick. I felt so full of foulness and disease and filth, so broken and ruined. That was really me. The Capitol's weapon, aimed right at her. What I hadn't realized then was that Coin was aiming me at her too.

"That wasn't you," Katniss says to me now. Her voice is gentle, but even so, I can hear that she's hoarse. She's probably spent a number of recent hours screaming her head off. I know the feeling; my throat's a little sore, too.

"Did I hurt you?" I do really want to know. The tape stops after some big guy (Boggs? Was that Boggs?) hits me hard enough to knock me out, and all I remember is that they put me in restraints after that and I didn't see Katniss for weeks. Not that I wanted to see her, then. The thought of her made me shake with fear.

She has to clear her throat before answering, as if she too has to push away the memory of my hands on her throat. "Not permanently," she says. "I'm fine."

"It hurt then, though." I'm not asking, but I suppose I'm secretly hoping she'll say it wasn't as bad as it looked.

She reaches over and takes both my hands in hers. She admits,"It hurt." I close my eyes in pain. I try not to cry – I've always cried easily, and only my brothers' constant teasing and pummeling prepared me for the schoolyard – but I can't help it, the tears practically fly out of my eyes. I have so little self-control now. Erections, tears, flashbacks, I can't control a damn thing. "Peeta," she says as if the telling is actually painful to her, "it wasn't so much a physical hurt." She pauses a minute, and I see her swallow. "It was... it just _gutted_ me. It was so cruel, that they took you, and made you... not be you. It's why I was so horrible to you after." She sighs a little. "Because I missed you so bad when you were gone, and then you weren't _you_ when you got back."

I understand, I do. Finding out that someone you thought returned your love really doesn't is a _bitch_. I think of my mother, finding out at some point that she hadn't been my father's first choice. I think of how it felt when I knew that to my mother, I was at best an inconvenience. I think of how horrified I was on the train back home after our first Games, when I realized that most of the stuff Katniss had said and done had been for the cameras. That the love wasn't real. It had been like falling from a great height and hitting the ground so hard that for at least a second or two, you think you're dead. You're hurt so bad, you're so humiliated, you wish you _were_ dead.

"I know," I say to Katniss now.

"I'm okay," she says to me. Pushes the closet door open a little wider. "You're really you now. Most of the time, anyway. And if your real self goes away, you always come back." I think about this. I think she's right. I do come back. "I'm not afraid of you, Peeta."

"I could hurt you," I remind her.

"You would already have done it if you really meant to," she says, and she's calm. "You always tell me to get away from you if you're struggling for control."

I consider it. She's right. I've actually gone for her twice, that I can remember: once immediately following my rescue, with all that venom in me, and once under combat conditions. Every time since then, I've managed to hold on to my sanity long enough to warn her.

Buttercup comes in to yowl at her. "Shut UP, you evil thing!" she yells back. I try, and fail, not to laugh, because this sounds like the old Katniss. "Don't laugh at me," she says to me, mock-angry.

Or maybe she is really angry. I am not as able to gauge the feelings of people around me as I used to be. It's too hard to figure out what's going on in my own head, let alone everybody else's. "Sorry," I say, and get up. I give her a hand standing up, because she's still so stiff.

"I'm okay," she says again, sounding tired instead of mad, and leans on me. "It was just... I felt so alone. You weren't yourself, and Haymitch got himself completely plastered, and Mother isn't here. And _her_. I miss her _so much_," and her voice shakes. "I get to feeling sometimes that it isn't worth it, all this pain just to keep living."

"Sometimes I'm not sure either," I tell her. _Except for you. I'd do anything for you_.

She sighs. "It's not your fault. _They_ did this to us, and I think the only way to make it right, to beat them, is to live through it. Really live, not just exist." I open my arms and pull her close against me. We stand that way for awhile.

Then Buttercup yowls again, and I snort back another laugh. Katniss hits my bicep with her fist, fast, just the way Banner used to hit me if I teased him. I think I like it. I think she's teasing me. And anyway, her fist isn't very big, and she didn't hit hard. "It really is okay," I tell her. "I think he was just missing you and complaining about it."

"Sounds familiar," she says sourly, and I smile into her hair. She's right. She _is_ a lot like that stupid cat. "How long was I out?" she asks. Her stomach growls. I don't laugh.

"I don't know." I think about it for a minute. "I don't know how long I was out myself. And Haymitch is stupid drunk so there's no point asking him, either. I'm guessing..." I stop. I've been diligent about keeping track of the days by the calendar, not because it really matters, but because being disciplined about my time helps. However, I could very well have missed a day in there somewhere. "I don't know. This is morning, and it could either be Thursday or Friday. Depending."

"Greasy Sae might know," Katniss says, and lets go of me. "I'm starving."

"Me too." I hadn't felt like eating yet this morning, what with all the mess – that I caused – in my house. "Let's see what there is." Since Katniss has been sleeping at my house recently, Sae hasn't been making her a breakfast regularly. There's nothing hot on the stove, but there is bread and some cheese, and still a few apples in the storage bin on the lean-to porch. I slice the bread and apples. The bread is at least a couple of days old, so I'm guessing this is part of Wednesday's baking and today is Friday.

We eat. My jaw hurts, and I rub it, wondering what on earth I did to myself.

"You have a bruise there," Katniss observes. I just shrug. It isn't the first time I've hurt myself during a hallucination. It might have something to do with the overturned coffee table.

I'm wiping the knife off after our meal when it occurs to me that I probably should not have knives available to me, in my kitchen. I almost drop this one. It's relatively small, nothing like that monstrosity that Haymitch waves around if you wake him suddenly, but unlike Haymitch I could do some damage with it, if I were in the grip of a hallucination. I've actually killed people with a knife, you know. The thought of it makes my stomach churn.

"What?" Katniss asks me suspiciously. She's licking her finger and picking up crumbs from the table. "Peeta, what is it?" I shake my head, suddenly afraid to say it lest I find that she agrees. I put the knife back in the block. I sit back down, feeling shaky. "Look," she says, and how come she's so rational all of a sudden I don't know, "I can tell you're upset. You might as well say why. Remember what Johanna says."

I confess my fear about the knives. She doesn't laugh. She bites her lip and nods, which makes me feel worse. Then she sits back in the chair with raised eyebrows, considering the problem calmly, which makes me feel better. "Do you want me to bring them over here, and if you needed one I'd bring it back to you?"

"That seems inconvenient," I point out. "I do have legitimate need for them a lot of the time. I cook, you know. And I've never had an episode while I was cooking."

"I know," she says. "But if you'd feel better with them out of the house, maybe we should do that. Or how about this, we lock them up when you're not actually using them, and Sae keeps the key? Or Haymitch, even. You'll only use them during the day, so that shouldn't be a problem."

I consider. "Could work. Locking them up, I mean, if we could find something to put them in."

"Okay," Katniss says. She gets up out of her chair, and roots around on the lean-to porch for awhile. I sit, feeling guilty and hopeful. When she comes back in, it's with a large wooden box that has a padlock. "This ought to work fine. My father used to make arrows and put them in this until we could sneak them out to the woods. It still has its key, even." I agree that it could work. I still feel guilty, but slightly more hopeful.

"I'm sorry," I say to her. I can't believe I haven't said it before now. "For the other night. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"I know," she says.

I grit my teeth, and I explain about how negative emotion can make me susceptible, and then one of my triggers can make me flashback, and then sometimes that goes right through to a hallucination. How extreme physical sensation (I use the pain of my handcuffs as explanation) can anchor me to the present, to my real body, and keep me from getting tugged under, unless the hallucination comes on too fast.

"Ah," she says, looking into the distance, into the past when she kissed me out of going mutt, underground in the Capitol. "So that's why kissing you worked that time." Her whole face lightens, though she doesn't quite smile. "I'm sorry I didn't help. I didn't understand how quick it could happen. It'll be better next time, I'll know what to do."

I feel sick. "I don't ever want to hurt you. It really scares me, knowing that I could."

She looks back at me, such a level gaze, and it's not bravado. She sounds so sure when she says, "You wouldn't, though. You _wouldn't_. If you were going to do it, you'd have done it in the Capitol when those mutts came after us. You didn't then, and you didn't the other night. You were kind of nuts, but you didn't hurt me. And I know you won't now." I must not look convinced, because she goes on. "_I won't let_ _you_. I'll make you stay with me."

We look at each other for a minute. I fight down the urge to go to her and hold her and kiss her and pull all her clothes off and touch every part of her body and kiss her.

Then I fight it down again.

Because I believe her. If she's there when I start flashing back, she will help. This does not really solve the problem of what happens if I hallucinate when she's not there. But maybe that doesn't matter so much, because if she's not there, then I can't hurt her. I feel my whole body relax, just a little bit. Katniss will be on guard.

"I'm going home," I tell her as I'm standing up to go. "Think I'll paint a little while. Something soothing. Maybe District Four. With the waves, you know?" She smiles, tremulous, and I know she's thinking about Finnick. So am I. Finnick and Annie. Annie alone. Finnick eaten by mutts. I shudder. I dig my nails into my palms, and the edges of the flashback recede. "Maybe not."

"That beach was so pretty," Katniss says. "I think I'll go check my trapline, see if there are any rabbits. Or do you want me to come with you?"

"I can hang on," I say. Though I don't know that for sure. "Dinner, though?"

"Yes. There ought to be rabbits. I'll bring them over and we'll make dinner together."

I hang on all afternoon. I go ahead and slice up the bread I have and wrap it in the cloth, and then I put all the kitchen knives into the box and lock it. The key goes into a drawer in the study, until I can give it to Haymitch for safekeeping.

Then I paint that District Four beach with its waves. I paint Katniss' bare feet into the sand there. Then, because it almost makes me laugh, I paint my one real foot next to hers, just as if we are sitting on that beach holding hands and looking past our feet to the waves. It's making me smile, the way that neither one of us will ever mistake these feet as belonging to anyone else. And I paint blue flowers on her toenails, just for fun. It takes all afternoon, and I'm finishing the starfish I put on my own big toe as the door opens downstairs and I hear rustling in the kitchen.

I put the paints away and clean the brushes, and then I go down to her. Katniss has already skinned and gutted the rabbits, and then jointed them with her hunting knife, just so I don't have to use a knife myself. Dinner is rabbit stew with mushrooms and barley and some butter beans from the pantry. With Wednesday's bread, of course. Dipped in the broth, it isn't bad. I'll make some fresh tomorrow.

And we'll work on the Memory Book again.


	11. Chapter 11: Haircut

**A/N: Finally, our lovers start gettin' some lip action! Warning: smut on a mild level. (Clothes stay on at this point, don't worry. And if that piece of info disappointed you, just wait. Clothes are definitely going to come off in future chapters. Rrrowwwr.)**

Chapter 11: Haircut

_Katniss_

We get back to working on the Memory Book again, putting in Cinna and Portia and Finnick, and it's hard. Really hard. I miss Cinna dreadfully, and I feel so responsible for his death. And Finnick – remembering him is both crushing and inspiring. I know how hopeful he made me feel, and knowing that he could do that even after all the pain and humiliation he'd gone through, and his anxiety over Annie... well, I tell Peeta that we have to live well, to make up for all the days not lived well by people that we loved.

And Peeta, whose good heart seems to come back to itself a little more every day, takes my hand and says, "Let's make a pact. Every day we'll say something like, 'I pledge to live well in honor of Portia.' Or whoever's on your mind that day. Deal?"

"Deal." Sometimes I wake up and say these pledges to myself before I even get out of bed. It helps a little.

We're sitting at my kitchen table one day, just having finished lunch, when I decide to finally do something about the bangs that Peeta's been pushing out of his face for two weeks. "Hey," I say to him. "You need a haircut. Your hair's almost long enough to braid." It isn't really, though I rather like the way it curls down past his collar now. I like the way it feels in my fingers. Not as sleek and straight as my own hair, but somehow the texture of his is softer.

He smiles. "I guess I can ask around to see if anyone is cutting hair in town yet."

"No. I mean, Flavius left a pair of his hair-trimming scissors here after the Victory Tour. I can cut your hair myself."

This makes him laugh. "Katniss, I would rather not look like I'm shipping out for military duty. Leave my hair alone."

"No, really," I insist. "I can just do your bangs. The rest can just... grow. Until it bothers you, at least."

He raises his eyebrows at me. "Okay. If you insist. But go ahead and cut it all, not just the front."

"I do insist." I go to the lean-to porch and drag in the tall metal stepstool my mother always used for cleaning the tops of cabinets and for changing the light bulb. "Here. You can sit here." I unfold the stepstool with a flourish.

He laughs a little and sits on the top step, so that his head is at a good height for my hands to reach. I start to put my hands in his hair, and then I realize. "Oh. I forgot the comb."

"And the scissors," he says, smiling at me. He looks almost like his old self, the old earnestly delighted Peeta, and I forget the scissors for a moment while we just smile at each other. It's goofy and sweet, and then I go get a comb, a small bowl of water and Flavius' scissors, and get down to haircutting business.

I wet-comb through his hair, and start snipping, a little at a time to make sure I don't cut too much. I make him close his eyes, and I trim his bangs just to the bottom of his eyebrows, which have finally grown back in a half-hearted sort of way. Then I go behind him and cut the back just barely shorter than his jawline, which is still a little long but I'm leaving myself some leeway for later. I do the sides, trimming them up over his ears. He's got nice ears, actually. They lie nicely next to his head, not sticking out, and they're narrow and pink. I work carefully, since he's still got some burn scars on the right side of his neck and up behind that ear. Then I cut the top, layering it the way I saw Peeta's prep team do it on the Victory Tour.

Funny, I can't remember the names of any of his prep team. Portia I remember well, but not the prep team. What I saw them do, I took in almost unconsciously, without really watching on purpose.

It doesn't matter. I picked up enough, and after I trim the places that seem uneven, I comb through the hair again and command him to sit still so I can step back and really look. I look at his head, he looks at my face, and the whole experience starts to feel a little bit too personal, especially when I can't help noticing how deeply he's breathing. Slow and quiet, but deep, with his chest rising and falling, and his lips slightly parted.

The haircut is not bad, except for a bit I haven't trimmed well on the left side near the front. "Just a few more places," I say, and step close again to even that piece up. I cut a tiny bit too much, because I'm suddenly aware of close our bodies are. I'm practically standing between his knees, and although we have been physically closer, holding each other when we sleep, this is new. I step back automatically, ostensibly to check the cut but really to gather my composure, and it's then that I notice that his eyes are at the level of my breasts, not staring with greed but gazing with a sort of dreamy, unfocused wistfulness. I'm suddenly aware of my nipples now, and my own deep breathing.

I step closer so he can't see my face, and I look down to see that he's closed his eyes, like a gentleman.

I cut a little more, just a little, and even up the sides. It looks fine up close. I'm still very conscious of my breasts right in his line of vision, but his eyes are still closed. As I step back, they open and go right to my face. I touch the sides of his hair, making sure it's as even as possible, and it's just so soft I lose focus for a minute and caress his hair, and we're looking into each other's eyes, and his are utterly endless blue, like a summer sky I could fall up into, and his mouth is so beautiful, and there is this sudden sizzling heat almost like lightning between us, and I want to kiss him.

So I do.

I drop the scissors on the floor. I step close again and tilt his chin up, and kiss him. It starts soft, and my hands curl into his hair as his come up to my waist, pulling me even closer. We kiss and kiss, the gentleness sliding into something less civilized, and I can barely breathe. He runs the tip of his tongue across the inside of my lower lip, and I can't help it, I hear myself make a noise of deep pleasure. I kiss him back that way, and his arms tighten around me, and my hands are full of his hair.

The kisses get more and more heated, and I am starting to feel that hunger I felt kissing him on the beach, the night he was trying to get me to accept the sacrifice of his life in the Quell. It's frightening, how much I could lose myself in his arms, and how entwined our lives are now. They've been tangled around each other since Reaping Day nearly two years ago, and they're so intermingled I can't easily distinguish mine from Peeta's.

No, perhaps they've really been entwined since the day he tossed me the bread. I don't know. I don't think it matters at this point. I don't feel any more that my choice has been taken from me, I feel that I've been given this heavy burden that is also somehow a priceless gift.

"Peeta," I whisper, and pull back to look at him.

He makes a little sound of protest, his eyes still closed, but then he opens them and looks into my eyes. "You're so beautiful," he whispers back, and then he's standing up, pulling me even closer into his arms, and I'm reaching up to kiss him this time, and I don't want to stop, I don't ever want to stop, and then his hands are sliding down to my buttocks and holding me so close I can feel him as a rigid line of heat down my belly.

I know what it is, of course. We've slept in the same bed often enough that I've felt it before, against my hip or the small of my back, but before now, it always seemed like a thing that just _happened_, on its own, a thing he couldn't help. This time I've done it directly. A bolt of fear arrows through me. I don't want to stop, but I'm not sure I want to go beyond this point.

He must feel my resistance, as conflicted as it is. He pulls back from the kiss, and we're just standing there sort of panting, looking into each other's faces. Mine feels full of confusion. His is fierce and his eyes are alight, and _why_ is it that I keep forgetting the banked fire behind his gentle warmth? I've stoked it into a roaring blaze. I'm terrified by it, and yet I want to step right into it and let it burn me alive.

"We should stop," he says reluctantly, softly. He moves his hands back up to my waist and eases a little apart from me. I don't say anything because I can't talk, can't even catch my breath really. Finally I manage a nod and something that sounds like "uh-huh."

"You okay?" he asks me. I make the noise of assent again, and try to keep my legs steady. I don't know what's wrong with my knees, why they won't hold me up. "I think that was the first time you ever kissed me for real," he says, and a slow smile is creeping over his face, like dawn.

I shake my head.

"I mean, with no cameras involved. Or trying to keep me from flashing back," he explains. I shake my head again, trying to get the words to line up in my head. Why is it so difficult? I'm so fuzzy-headed I feel almost like I'm on morphling.

That beautiful smile of his just collapses. "It wasn't real just now?" he asks me, and he sounds so lost, so like the heartbroken boy on the train home from our first Games, that the words finally arrange themselves to come out.

"No! I mean, yes, it was real just now. But this wasn't the first time. The first time," I stop and get a good breath, "was in the Quell. On the beach. I kissed you first to shut you up, because I knew you'd go on and on about how my family needed me and no one really needed you. I meant what I said, that _I_ needed you. I still do. But I meant that kiss, too. All those kisses, every one of them. They were for real. So that was the first time."

His smile comes back, more radiant than before, and then we're kissing again, deeper and sweeter and fiercer, almost like we want to eat each other up. That hunger comes back, and I can't get close enough to him. His hands go everywhere. But it isn't long before I start feeling like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff. I want to be safe, but I want to go over it. I want to jump off the cliff, but I want to know I'll be safe. I don't think I can have both.

And he breaks the kiss and pushes me gently away from him again. "Katniss," he says, his voice pitched low, "we _have _to stop."

We're both panting for breath, and I want him in my arms. "But why?" I ask, as if that's not the stupidest question I've ever asked.

"If we don't stop," he says, still fierce and masculine, and his voice suddenly drops down to some lower register it's never reached in my hearing, "you're going to find yourself on the floor with your legs wrapped around my back." I gasp a little. The mental picture is both frightening and exciting, and his _voice_...

"Peeta," I protest, trying to figure out how to change his mind. I just want to keep kissing him, and forget about all the other stuff. Just kissing him forever, that's what I want. I definitely do _not _want babies. Therefore, I don't want to do anything that could make them.

"I just..." he closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose. "I just don't... have any control these days. Not over anything. I could hurt you without meaning to. And I don't think you're prepared for this."

"Oh, and _you_ are?" I snap back, feeling whiny and rejected for no good reason.

He opens his eyes, and shrugs. He looks embarrassed. "Oh, I don't know that I'd ever be completely prepared. But at least I've been dreaming about it since I was about fourteen, so I've gotten that far ahead of you. I mean, I have all these ridiculously elaborate plans. Should the situation arise, of course." There's a tiny grin beginning at the corners of his mouth.

The thought of Peeta thinking about having sex with me is either unbelievably rude, or the most secretly-exciting thing I've ever heard in my life. For a minute, I can't even get my breath, and I just stand there with my mouth hanging open. Then, because I'm having very mixed feelings, I snap at him again. "Why are my morals all so damn funny to everybody else?"

And the grin recedes. "It's not funny. But seriously, have you ever _thought_ about having sex with anybody? In a detailed sort of way, you know, things you might like to do or see or feel? As opposed to just knowing what would happen?"

I only have the most basic idea of what's supposed to happen. What parts go where, that sort of thing. I have a vague idea that you do it lying down. It probably shows on my face, because he relents. Peeta does usually know when to shut up. (It's a gift I don't have.) He doesn't even laugh at me. "I thought not. Look, I'm going home. Think I'll paint for awhile."

I'm horribly disappointed. But he's so patient with me all the time. "On the book?" That's what we'd planned to do this afternoon.

"Not today. I'm sorry. And thanks for the haircut."

"What about dinner?" ___Dinner ___is a euphemism. I really mean, _Will you sleep with me tonight and keep my nightmares away?_, but I can't ask that. It occurs to me to wonder how difficult it is for him to hold me in his arms and _not _kiss me. Because I am sure planning on kissing him again.

He stops at the door and sighs. "I don't think it's a good idea tonight." When the door swings shut behind him – why can't he just slam it the way a normal person in a temper would? - I let out a sound of frustration. The door opens again, and he sticks his head in. His gaze is very level. "If it gets bad and you really need me, just come over. And try to be gentle when you wake me up."

"Fine," I snarl. Just for a second, he smiles at me. And then he's gone.

Dammit. I sweep up the hair on the floor and throw it out into the back yard. It's summer, and I know the birds will be needing nesting material. That's prime stuff, all soft and bright.

I wash the lunch dishes. I dry them and put them away.

Dammit. I want him. Even if I'm not quite sure exactly what I want him for.

I make another of those frustrated sounds, because I'm, guess what, frustrated. And then I get to thinking, _What if I went to see that doctor?_ We have an actual doctor in town now, someone who was apparently working in Thirteen when I lived there and might possibly have treated me for something-or-other. I might even know this person. All I do know is that it's a woman, and that when Haymitch told us that Twelve had been assigned a real licensed doctor and told us her name, Peeta smiled and said he remembered her.

I think I might have gotten a little snippy at the idea that we needed anything other than an old-fashioned apothecary, as if my mother weren't the best thing that ever happened to health care in Twelve, and also at the idea of someone who is not Prim doing the very thing that she'd wanted to do with her life.

Haymitch explained to me that Panem Republic, in the person of President Paylor herself, had authorized small salaries to be paid by the central government to any physicians willing to practice in the districts. Apparently this doctor had volunteered to come to Twelve and live here.

Shades of Cinna, volunteering to style for District Twelve in the 74th Hunger Games. But I doubt it – maybe she's a celebrity hound. Maybe she was fascinated by Peeta's mental health history. Maybe she's just desperate for a job.

That's not fair, though. Doctors are scarce enough in the districts. And it's not like she's bugging us with a camera or anything.

Since she got here a few weeks ago, I think Peeta's been down to the clinic a couple of times, but I don't know what for. It was one of the first buildings that went up in town, and it's pretty spartan from the outside: plank walls with a door and two windows. Not even painted. Handmade sign outside.

He'd come back from a visit to the clinic and tried to talk to me about the doctor, whose name I can't remember, but I kept cutting him off because the very idea of someone other than my mother treating people kept making me miserable. So I don't know her name, or whether she's a "head doctor" as Johanna called her psychiatrist, or anything. I don't know anything except she volunteered, and Paylor's paying her salary, and Peeta thinks she's nice.

Peeta pretty much thinks everybody's nice. Or maybe it's just that everybody's pretty much nice to him.

Now that I think about it, that must have been where he got the prescriptions that he's takes every day. They aren't herbs or berries or ground-up plant material for tea like he'd have gotten from my mother; they're Capitol-style pills, in little brown bottles with instructions on them and names I can't decipher.

I don't want to take any pills at all; I remember how dreadful those sleeping pills Effie gave me were. And I am frightened of how easily I could come to depend on morphling. But maybe there's something this doctor has that I could use to prevent babies. Just to keep that particular worry from sticking another wedge in between Peeta and me.

Should the situation arise, of course.

I'm a little surprised to look up and notice what's around me: town. Or, at least, what used to be and what is in the process of becoming "town." I've walked ten minutes from my house without realizing that my impatient subconscious has acted on what was to my conscious mind a rational decision.

That handmade sign on the clinic wall says:

District Twelve Free Health Clinic

Hours: 8 a.m. to 4 pm. Monday through Saturday

Emergency Care also available

Lida Powers, M.D.


	12. Chapter 12: Progress

**A/N: Okay, so I said "some minor characters OOC." I lied. You'll be seeing Lida (pronounced _Lye_-da) in future chapters, which makes her not a minor character. The more I write her, the better I like her. I thought it would be interesting to explore a character who was a little older, someone who's got a quirky past and who could serve as an occasional sounding board for our brave, tormented teenage hero and heroine.**

Chapter 12: Progress

_Dr. Lida Powers_

The Mockingjay herself walks in at just past 3 pm on a Wednesday, looking uncertain and almost curled in on herself. Lida has just finished a well-child exam for one of the very few toddlers in the district, a delightfully robust and rambunctious little boy with dark hair and the warm gray eyes she sees so frequently here, and she's come out to the waiting room to see who's next. The only person in the waiting room is the Mockingjay.

Lida could really use a nurse to do triage and manage the waiting room, to assist with procedures, and to help with some of the paperwork. Even though the only crucial paperwork is her patient notes, she's supposed to be keeping track of how many patients she sees, and for what ailments or injuries. And she keeps doing it because sooner or later the district will start filling up, and she'll need more help, and in order to get it she'll need documentation. She also does it because technically, she's still an army doctor, and what was routine in District Thirteen has become more or less a habit.

The Mockingjay's eyes light on Lida, and there's a hint of recognition there. Lida only had her as a patient once in Thirteen, with that excruciating treatment for the bruised ribs (which the Mockingjay bore stoically, as Lida had expected her to). At that point, Lida had just finished a rotation of study in the psychiatric unit, which was then all abuzz with the excitement of treating Peeta Mellark, recently rescued from a hijacking experience in the Capitol.

She'd liked Peeta. Despite the desperation and the anger and fear, despite his outbursts, she felt that she could see a real sweetness underneath his present terror. It had sickened her, that the Capitol could have tried to destroy this kid in such a horribly cruel way. _Any_ kid. Any _person,_ really. But perhaps especially this one, because when you caught him unaware, his gaze was so soft. He had reminded her of two boys who'd been dear to her, and whose memories she carried around her for warmth.

She'd tried to remain objective. But when the call went around for doctors willing to transfer to the districts and live in devastated, poverty-ridden areas, she'd been one of the first to volunteer. She'd grown up poor herself before she'd gotten out of Six and through the wilds to a place she'd only guessed existed, and poverty was not really hardship to her. Twelve called to her, and on her application she'd mentioned her love of the mountains. The mountain people themselves. And her familiarity with the patient files of one Peeta Mellark.

It was that little piece of info, she believed, that had garnered her the assignment to Twelve. Well, either that, or her placid acceptance of the pitifully small salary offered. The salary didn't matter to her; she didn't need much.

Katniss Everdeen, the Mockingjay, is still no more than a girl, Lida sees now. She seems even less sure of herself than she'd seemed in Thirteen, when she'd already seen so much battle and fear and pain. They said she'd lost her mind when she'd killed President Coin, and Lida has wondered ever since whether that was really true.

Lida has seen her in town a few times in the weeks she's been stationed here: carrying game to trade, occasionally working on a cleanup crew. She always seems distant, as if she's listening to something no one else can hear.

Now she's standing in Lida's clinic, looking like she wants to ask for something but not sure what. "Hi," Lida says. "I'm Dr. Powers. I'm not sure if you remember me, but I was part of the team treating you for those bruised ribs in Thirteen. How are you today?"

The Mockingjay relaxes a little at Lida's matter-of-fact tone. "Hi," she says uncertainly. "Actually, I, um... you look familiar but I don't remember..." she trails off.

"It's okay," Lida tells her. "You had a lot on your mind. Listen, why don't we come back into my office? I have coffee there if you'd like. I'll be able to hear if anyone else comes into the clinic."

"Okay," the girl says, and follows Lida down the short hall. She refuses coffee, but accepts some water. Sits down in the chair next to Lida's. Won't look her in the eye, but glances around the spare little office instead. "You're not a head doctor, are you?"

"Nope. I've done some additional study in psychiatry, but I'm not a specialist." Lida waits a moment. "Did you just come by to say hello, or did you want to see me for a medical reason?"

The Mockingjay blushes a deep pink and looks down at her hands. Lida controls her eyebrows, which want to rise in her curiosity. _Pregnancy? A request for painkillers? Something for Peeta? Something entirely different? _But then the girl raises her head and takes a deep breath in. "I wondered if... maybe you have access to Capitol medicine."

"Some," Lida answers cautiously. She does have several sophisticated (and expensive) medications on hand, including morphling and things for treating infection, but the guidelines for prescribing them are very strict, and she'd rather that people not know exactly what she's got or how much. "What in particular?"

"Well, for... for birth control, my prep team called it," the girl explains, blushing a shade darker.

"Oh." Lida manages not to smile, knowing that if she's asking for that, her relationship with Peeta must be improving to some degree. "Yes, I have several things on hand, as a matter of fact. But I'm required to tell you that the government is strongly discouraging their use except in cases of medical necessity. Population is down and we need more babies, not fewer."

"I'm never having babies," the girl says, fiercely. Her eyes are hard. "Not now, not _ever_. Okay, never mind." She starts to get up.

"Look, I'm required to give anybody who asks for it that speech," Lida explains. "In your case, I can make a very good argument that you don't need the burden of a child to look after, if anybody even bothers to ask me about it." _This girl has been through so much, and she's just a baby herself_. "You're still quite young, anyway." In spite of her professional demeanor, Lida can't help the way her voice softens. _Where is Mrs. Everdeen? She's quite a competent nurse-healer, if I remember correctly. Why isn't she around to look after her daughter? _

The Mockingjay nods and relaxes back into the chair, looking back down at her entwined hands. Lida goes through the list of options with her: condoms, the every-day pill, the once-a-month pill, the uterine implant that lasts ten years but isn't recommended for women who haven't given birth, the under-the-skin implant that suppresses ovulation for up to two years, the surgery that's permanent, the once-a-month shot for men that suppresses sperm production. They agree that the arm implant might be the best option, though the girl's visibly nervous about having some unknown object stuck in her arm, and Lida knows why.

Then Lida explains that she'll need to do a physical exam before the injection, just to rule out the adverse indicators.

"The what?"

Lida explains: an existing pregnancy, a sexually-transmitted disease, high blood pressure, a congenital deformity, things of that nature.

"I know I'm not pregnant," the girl says, firmly, chin coming up.

"Okay," Lida says, "But I'll have to do a urinalysis anyway. I have to have proof for the records. Here's a cup. I'll need you to go – "

Katniss interrupts her. "I _can't _be pregnant. I've never..." and she manages to blush even more.

Lida's nonplussed. Most of the citizens of Thirteen had not watched any of the Hunger Games for years and years. But because of the excitement in Thirteen about the burgeoning rebellion and the possibility that one, or both, of those two young Victors from Twelve might join the cause, the Quarter Quell and its flanking coverage had been broadcast, and she'd seen that interview in which Peeta Mellark had announced their secret marriage and Katniss Everdeen's pregnancy. From behind glass in the hospital, she'd seen interactions between the two of them that were as strained as they were emotionally charged. There'd been _something_ significant between them, but apparently not that. "I thought..."

"He was making it up," Katniss says flatly. "Hoping to protect me."

Lida considers this a moment, and then she understands his design to maximize sympathy for the girl he loved, through any means possible. She shakes her head in admiration. "Oh. He's even more clever than I'd realized."

And the Mockingjay smiles. It transforms her. It's the first time Lida has ever seen her do it in person. "He is," she says, with a degree of pride, and just for a moment she looks like the girl who volunteered as tribute to save her sister. Lida wants to hug her, but doesn't. She's a _doctor_, she doesn't hug patients.

She takes a history of menstrual cycles, which is fairly normal, except that her patient hasn't even menstruated since just before the Quarter Quell, nearly a year ago. _Well, she's still quite thin. And has been under unbelievable stress. That would probably do it_. Lida waives the urine test on the paperwork, does a quick finger stick for bloodwork (_check those hormone levels while I'm at it_), and takes the girl into an exam room for the physical. Checks blood pressure and general health. Explains the speculum and the stirrups, explains what she's checking for step by step, eases concerns. "Everything's textbook in there, just perfect." She injects the tiny implant into Katniss' upper arm and bandages it. Lida explains that the medication should be completely onboard in Katniss' bloodstream within five days, though to be safe she might want to wait a week, and that in twenty to twenty-four months, the implant will lose its effectiveness. "Any questions?"

The girl shakes her head, and then stops short, remembering something. "Yes. Does it really hurt, the first time?"

_Ah yes. That question_. "Some women experience a lot of pain and bleeding, and some don't at all. It just depends – partly on your particular physiology and partly on how relaxed and prepared you are. Hard to say, really. Does the prospect frighten you?"

Katniss' eyes flash. "Did it hurt _you_?"

Lida blinks. It is strange to go head-to-head with the Mockingjay, who clearly does not tolerate intrusiveness, however well-meant. She intuits that if she shows a little vulnerability to this girl, the hostility will ease. And after all, Lida is a survivor too. They have that much in common. "Yes. But I wasn't prepared. I wasn't even given the choice to say yes or no, and I was younger than you are." Lida pauses for a moment. "You still have a hymen, so I'd expect a little pain, not much. Just go slow until you're ready, and it won't be that bad. Don't worry."

"I'm not afraid of pain," Katniss says scornfully, but there's an edge of something in her voice that lets Lida know that anticipation of this particular experience has her very jumpy. She bites her lip. "How will I know..."

"When you're ready?" Lida lets herself think briefly of Wynn, imagines him watching her from behind the Mockingjay's shoulder, lets herself smile at him just a little. "Do a lot of kissing and touching and messing around. And then wait three more minutes past the point where you think you might die if you don't have him." _I miss you so much, Wynn_. "And I apologize for being blunt, but if you can manage an orgasm beforehand, so much the better."

She looks back at Katniss, who's frowning and blushing at the same time. "No, I mean it, don't worry. You have an excellent sense of timing. I did see some of your Games, after all. And the propos. You'll know." Lida thinks a minute. "If you're really concerned about it, I _can_ take care of it right now. A little shot to numb you, a little snip with my teeny scissors, and it would all be gone. Nothing to hinder you later. It's just a flap of skin anyway." She gives Katniss a level, serious look. "But honestly? In terms of emotional satisfaction, I truly think it would be better if it happened naturally."

The girl looks confused. She's not playing dumb, either, she just doesn't know. Lida explains. "It's forward of me to say this, but I got very fond of Peeta. We talked some when he was in the hospital in Thirteen. Given what happened to him in the Capitol, how his memories were twisted – I think he deserves to know from _personal _experience that he was the first."

And Katniss looks down, still blushing, the tiniest of smiles at the corner of her lips. "Okay," she says.

"Go ahead and get dressed," Lida says, barely cutting off the "sweetie" she'd been about to add. Really, she is going to have to keep her maternal instincts under wraps with those two, those teenagers who've had to grow up too fast. She sighs as she exits the exam room.

Katniss gives her a shy smile as she leaves. _ Progress_, Lida thinks, with satisfaction.


	13. Chapter 13: Patience

**A/N: _Yeah baby_. Things are starting to heat up. Some smut in this chapter: lip action, little bit o' hip action, but not the full range of action. (Not _yet._ Take a page out of Peeta's book and be patient. Ignore his overeager groin. _He_ tries to.) **

**Also, I noticed that this site has recently restated its policy on M ratings. If you think this chapter goes too far into MA (*I* don't, but you might disagree), please let me know. That would mean that I'd need to revise future chapters somewhat, because they're bolder than this one.  
**

Chapter 13: Patience

_Peeta_

She's been... _different,_ lately.

Softer. Less stressed. More tolerant of Haymitch's unreliability. Friendly with people on the cleanup crew. She actually invited Dr. Lida to dinner this week, and smiled intermittently throughout the meal. And the other morning, I caught her out in the yard, swinging Sae's granddaughter Mamie around in circles, both of them giggling. (Giggling! It was sweet.)

My little snit-fit about not sleeping with her that I threw the afternoon she cut my hair and we wound up in a clinch – well, that lasted exactly half a night. I'd been so worried that I'd get out of control while holding her that I told her I thought we'd better not, and then that night I had nightmares of the hijacking, when they used to hold my eyes open with clamps and make me watch these horrible videos of Mutt-Katniss. I woke up completely soaked in sweat, and immediately had to get up and change the sheets, because sleeping on wet sheets is just impossible. So that's what I was doing when I heard the front door open, and she came down the hall into my room, looking ragged with her own nightmares. I just opened my arms and she came into them, and I apologized, and so did she, though I still don't know quite what for.

We went right back to sleeping chastely together in my bed. Well, as chastely as I can manage. I still sometimes wake up with the World's Most Desperate Erections in the morning, especially if she happens to be wearing one of my shirts, and it's ridden up above her underpants. (She says she likes to sleep in my shirts because they smell like me, even when they're clean. I _tried_ to resist finding that the sexiest thing I've ever heard in my life, but no dice.)

We've been working on the Memory Book – slower than we had previously been doing. From every day we've moved to a two-afternoons-a-week sort of schedule, and I've finished the section on my family. It was really hard, doing my dad. Painting his gentle smile. Remembering the feeling of his arm on my shoulders. My sweet-natured father, who taught me everything I know deepest in my bones: that it's the intangibles that matter so much, that kindness and generosity make grinding poverty more bearable – _oh_, how my mother railed at him for coming out on the losing end of a trade! And that loving another person means you learn to be patient, and patienter, and still more patient.

I miss him so much. But I'm starting to feel his presence in my life as this tremendous gift. If I could never please my mother, I couldn't disappoint my dad. He loved me, and he was so patient.

I'm being patient with Katniss, and I think she notices. She's been very gentle with me. Affectionate, even. If she's been out of the house, she comes to find me for a hug as soon as she gets back. And she kisses me goodnight now. Just one kiss, a sweet chaste one, but it's a beautiful way to end the day.

She even asks me if we could call Johanna Mason this evening after supper. I miss Johanna myself, and I think it was a great idea, so we call her house in Seven after getting the number from the Capitol operator. Johanna isn't home, and Katniss is so disappointed. She frowns in that way people do when they're trying not to cry, so I pull her into my arms and hold her.

We stand that way for awhile, and then I can feel my body starting to respond to her, so I try to ease out of the hug. She'll have none of that – her arms tighten around me and she presses closer, and of course that has exactly the effect on me that you'd expect. And I can almost see it dawning on her (_Oh, right, Peeta's a guy_) as my boner becomes more and more apparent.

But she still doesn't pull away from me. Instead, she raises her head and looks at me straight on. "Kiss me, Peeta," she whispers, and I just want to fall into her eyes.

So I kiss her. Tenderly and innocently at first, like our goodnight kisses, but then she opens her mouth and my brain sort of goes off duty, and I'm only _feeling_. Like you do in a dream, a good dream, everything soft-focus and beautiful, her hair in my hands and her hands stroking my back, our bodies pressed together and heat rolling up between us and this exquisite joyous almost-pain in my heart.

I don't know how much later it is that she says my name and puts her hand flat on my chest, pushing away just a little. I'm as dazed as if I'd been asleep for a week, and I think I just stare for a minute, trying to figure out whether I'm awake or not. "I think we should stop," she says, and pulls away from me, slowly and gently.

"Oh," I say. (I think.) My brain has not yet got the message to come back online, but I do manage to take my hands out of her hair.

"That was..." she says, and shakes her head as if she's shaking off dreams, too, "_lovely_."

"Yes," I say. (I'm pretty sure that's what I say.)

She squints up at me. "Are you okay?"

I nod. "Just sort of... dazed."

And she laughs softly as she pulls completely away from me. "Me too. Can we try Johanna again? It's later. Maybe she'll be home now."

I think I assent. I can't stop staring at her. She dials the number, and lets it ring and ring, a little frown line between her eyes. Nobody answers. Finally she hangs up with a little shrug. "Guess she's just not home."

"Maybe she doesn't live there now," I say, without thinking much about it.

"Maybe." She sighs.

"I need a shower before I go to bed," I say, thinking, _a cold one. A __**really**__ cold one_.

"Fine. I'm tired, too." At the study door she turns and looks back over her shoulder at me. "Are you sure you're okay?"

I nod. "Yes. It's just like I can't seem to wake up. It was such a nice dream." And that sounds completely stupid, but it also happens to be true, so I just let it go. And so does she, because she just cocks her head at me and smiles before she heads up the stairs.

I follow slowly, after turning out all the downstairs lights. I trip over my feet at least twice, thinking about how soft her lips are. The way my name sounds on them.

When I get up to the bedroom she's already in bed, her clothes flung on the floor. (She's a flinger, I'm not. I like to have everything neat before I go to bed, but for some reason it doesn't bug me if the clothes on the floor are hers. When she's tired, she's _tired,_ and she just drops things everywhere. I don't worry, because I know she'll have them off the floor and either in the dirty-clothes basket or put away by the time I get up in the morning.)

I step into the bathroom and turn on the water, not too warm, but as soon as I get into the shower, my penis starts a conversation with me right away.

It does that pretty often. Mind you, they're not exactly_ rational_ conversations. Basically, it's trying to get me to humor it, and I'm the one trying to be rational. Sometimes that's futile. This evening, the conversation goes something like this:

Peeta's Penis: _Hey, we were having a pretty good time there, weren't we?_

Me: _Uh, yeah. But we're going to forget about that and calm down so we get some __**sleep **__tonight, okay? No more of this waking me up all needy and stuff._

PP: _You know you're not going to get any sleep without taking care of me. _

Me: _Shut up. Look, I'm going to turn the water on cold now._

However, the cold water makes my nipples contract, and I have an instant mental picture of how Katniss looked under her mother's nightgown in the cold room, and the cold water completely backfires, and I suddenly find that I've taken myself firmly in hand.

PP: _Ha! See, you can't resist. You might as well make the water a little warmer now._

Me: _Damn it. Fine, okay, warmer water._

PP:_ And you might as well take care of me now, too. _

Me:(removing hand from dick) _Oh, grow up. Get a little restraint, willya?_

PP: _If you go in there and get in that bed with her without making me happy, you won't be able to sleep. You'll lie there and try to ignore me and pretend I don't exist, and you'll have to jerk off anyway and hope she doesn't wake up. _

Me: (speechless)

PP: _You know I'm right._

Me: (sighing) _Yeah, but you're wrong too._

PP: _You'll feel a lot better if you do._

Me: _Shut up. That is ungentlemanly._

PP: (snickers)

Me: _What now?_

PP: _I think she's sleeping in your t-shirt. You're still going to wind up grinding against her hip in your sleep._

Me: _**Aauuugghhh**__... You never give up, do you?_

PP: (snickers again)

Me: _SHUT. UP. I mean it. You're not the boss of me. _

I turn the shower on cold full blast, which does shut him up after a few minutes, and finish cleaning up as fast as possible. Towel off, put on sleep pants and a light blue t-shirt, brush my teeth and open the bathroom door.

She's left the lamp on by the bed, and she's not asleep yet. Her dark hair's spread out on the pillows, and yes, she_ is_ wearing my t-shirt, an old white one that I wore at the bakery a lot. Should I tell her I can see her nipples through it? No. Too embarrassing. She lifts her head off the pillow and smiles at me. "Who were you talking to in there?"

I just about have a heart attack. I can feel my face getting red. "What? Nobody. _Nothing._ Just talking to myself." _ God_, I hope she couldn't decipher any of that through the wall.

"Okay," Katniss says, in this _let's-humor-Peeta _sort of voice. "You sounded like you were sort of arguing with somebody." She lies back down as I slide in between the sheets. "I guess I was just thinking about Johanna telling me about you arguing with yourself, back in Thirteen."

"Arguing with myse – _oh_. About whether or not you were a mutt." I remember that. I remember being really horrified at seeing her sitting next to Gale and laughing, wondering if they'd finally made it official. How _much_ that had hurt. It had plugged right into that whole "Katniss-will-only-hurt-me" message the Capitol had kept pounding into my head via hideous and unsavory means.

And at the same time, I had seen something in her eyes when she looked at me across the table, something that was so oddly _familiar_. A look I'd seen countless times on the faces of Seam kids on the other side of the bakery window, staring at trays of cookies: longing. The way you look at something you want so, so badly but you know you can't have. The way I'd looked at her for years, as a matter of fact, staring across schoolrooms when her head was turned away.

The disconnect between the sight of Katniss-and-Gale-together and that ache in her eyes had made me _so angry_. Like it was all my fault that she was hurting. The confusion between what my mind was telling me (Katniss is a mutt, Katniss means only pain) and what my senses registered (Katniss is _in_ pain) – I couldn't figure any of it out.

What I say to her now is, "Yeah. That was a bad time."

She's quiet for a minute as we do our usual settling-in-bed routine, arranging arms and heads and knees. When she speaks, she does so softly. "Are you having a bad time now? Do I need to go?"

Without meaning to, I squeeze her tight. "Please don't go."

She squeezes back. "Okay. But you have to tell me: is it hard? When you sleep with me?"

"Is it _hard _when I sleep with you?" I repeat in disbelief. Did she really say that? _Don'tlaughdon'tlaughdon'tlaugh_, I tell myself. Of course I fail. I totally crack up. Wasn't my own genitalia just saying that to me, not ten minutes ago? I laugh so hard tears come into my eyes and I can't get my breath. And it's even more hilarious because she has absolutely _no idea_ what she's just said.

She pokes me in the ribs, scowling. "Stop it. Why are you laughing?"

I can't stop. I have to sit up and howl some more, and she just gets more annoyed and pokes me harder, and it tickles, so I grab her wrists with one hand, cackling like a loon the whole time, and poke _her_ in the ribs. She shrieks with sudden surprised laughter, and wriggles away, and I catch her and tickle her some more, and the whole thing devolves into this ridiculous wrestling match. It's the same sort of roughhousing that anybody with brothers knows well, and I'm not even thinking about her being a girl until I wind up on top of her, hip to hip and our bodies pressed together along all our length, and we're both gasping from laughing too much.

Of course by then it's damn well hard again, nestled into the juncture of her thighs with only two thin layers of cloth separating it from the place where it so desperately wants to go. So I let go her wrists and say, "You tell _me _if it's hard, Katniss," and I move my hips against hers so she gets my meaning. I'm still laughing a little, but as the realization hits her she stops laughing, and her eyes go wide.

She doesn't look frightened. She looks _fascinated_. If she tells me to move, I will, but I don't much want to. I really, really do not want to move away. I want to stay. I want to _move in_.

"Oh," she says, and her voice is breathy and surprised, that of a person making a delightful discovery. She does not tell me to get the hell off her. She does not, in fact, give me any sort of signal that could be construed as, "Get the hell off me, you sex fiend_." _I can feel her nipples poking into my chest.

"You tell _me_," I say again, and my own voice drops in pitch as I'm thinking about how it would feel to be inside her, and I can't help moving against her one more time. Twice. I feel the balance of power shifting from my brain to somewhere a lot lower down, someplace animal and instinctive. I may not have done this before, but my body knows how.

She inhales sharply. "Peeta," she says, almost pleading, and it is taking every bit of my strength to not rip off her panties and just _take_ her, right this second, regardless of what she wants or whether it's a good decision. I want to do that so badly, and I'm so tempted by it, that it frightens me. So I just make myself roll off, over onto my back, away from her, to try to regain some control.

Just as suddenly, she sits up and leans toward me. "Are you okay?"

I snort. "Yeah. I mean, I have no blood left in my brain, but I'm okay. I'm not having a flashback or anything." I take a deep breath. "Do you see why..." I have to think how to word this. "Do you see why I worry sometimes about sleeping with you? That part of me" – I point down – "does not think. It has no morals." I give another amused snort. "That's who I was arguing with in the bathroom. It is completely shameless."

This time she laughs. "You argue with your – "

She can't even say it. Which should be funny, given my mother's fixed ideas about what Seam girls are supposed to be like, but this finicky attitude toward sex is particularly Katniss. It's not snobbishness, exactly, and not prudishness either. She is not a prude. I'm not sure quite what to call it, unless it's purity. And I don't mean just being a virgin, I mean Katniss being Katniss, stubborn and prideful and self-reliant and fierce and loyal, and most of all true to herself, which is a kind of purity I admire so much it makes my throat ache.

I finish her sentence. "My penis. Yep." She blushes. (_I love it_ that she blushes.) "Actually, it's not so much arguing as it is that my penis," she blushes redder when I say it again, "tries to get me to do stuff, and I say no a lot."

"What stuff?" she chokes out, and she's giggling, probably from nerves.

"Well... tonight it kept insisting that I wasn't going to be able to sleep unless I took care of it. Which is not really true, but its one repeated request is for me to make it happy." She looks confused. "Make myself come, okay? You know what that is, right?"

She still looks confused. I explain orgasms, probably turning red myself, and at some point she makes a connection to something she already knew, and she starts nodding. "Okay. Okay, I get it." She looks down, with a tiny smile quirking at the corner of her mouth. "Who won the argument?"

"Oh, I did," I tell her. "This time."

A frown creases her forehead. "Wait, are you going to be able to sleep?"

_Crap_. "Probably," I say. But I think she knows that I'm lying. I was fine after the shower, but now? The odds, as they say, are definitely not in my favor.

"Well," she says, "if you're sure it's okay for me to stay."

"Stay with me," I say, my heart contracting as I say this to her, this phrase that kept me whole and sane in those dark days in warfare in the Capitol.

And she smiles. She gives me that whole beautiful trusting Katniss smile, and says, "Always," to me, and I just about lose it. I pull her down to me and hold her tight, and tears drip from my eyes into her hair. This, at least, has a beneficial effect on my ill-timed erection. She doesn't seem to notice it one way or the other.

We turn off the lamp to settle down for sleep, and her breath evens out pretty quickly. Mine doesn't. An hour later I'm counting the number of knots I know how to do in my head, and arguing with my penis again.


	14. Chapter 14: Called To, a Thousand Times

**A/N: Getting verrry close now to that "You love me, real or not real?" moment., which should take place in a few chapters. Some minor smut, but less than you'll be seeing in the future. Also, I think this is still in the M-rating category, but if you disagree and think it's really MA, please message me pronto. **

**BTW, every female person of legal-consenting age that I've ever discussed the matter with had a very similar reaction upon their first glimpse of a Real Live Erection Up Close. We didn't all have the _same_ thoughts exactly, but it was usually some variation on 1) "Wow, that's weird looking," and 2) "Oh, that is SO not going to fit."**

**(If you're a girl, and you had considerably different thoughts upon seeing your first, I would love to hear from you in a private message. Research, you know. Also, it might be fun just to tell me that I Am Wrong.) **

**As per the usual, I don't claim to own THG. **

Chapter 14: Called To, a Thousand Times (with apologies to Ezra Pound)

_Katniss_

I _swear_, he's driving me crazy.

First we get into this kissing marathon in Peeta's study, and all he wants to do is kiss. He lets me break it up without protesting even a little bit. And then we're in bed, and I'm trying to be considerate about not making things difficult for him when we sleep together, and he _laughs_ at me. And _then_ he tickles me and wrestles me down, and we're laughing, and just as I figure out exactly what's pressing into me in such a good spot, he rolls off me and gets all noble and self-sacrificing about it. All "don't worry about me, I'm fiiiiiiine." Saint Peeta of the Bread.

Which is untrue. I dozed off for awhile there, because the circle of his arms is one of my happy places. Like the lake my father used to take me to. Like the Meadow used to be. Like Gale's rock used to be. But better, because it's not just a place.

Anyway, I wake up in the middle of the night to realize that my happy place is _not_ _fine_. He's twitchy and jumpy and uncomfortable. I think at first that he's dreaming, but he's not. I can tell by his breathing that he's awake, and his legs keep shaking with tremors. He'll stretch them out, and then relax again, and sigh, and then get _twitchy_ again. He's trying so hard to just be still and not disturb me.

And I think that he puts himself through so much discomfort, effort, even pain, to do what I want. To be what I need. And what do I do for him?

Not enough. _Why does he put up with it?_, I wonder. As if in answer, Mrs. Witch Mellark's face floats in front of my eyes, there in the dark. I lie there and think about him and his family and his good heart, and I realize, _He doesn't think he deserves any better. He's lived on scraps of affection so long that he doesn't know he should have more._

Which is stupid, but so like him.

And me, I've taken everything for granted, everything he's given me without even counting up how much it costs or whether he could afford it. He just gives.

He loves me the way I love Prim. Yes, _love_. Not "loved." She's not here for me to give my love to, and all of it has gotten bottled up inside me, blocked, drying up, dying. I've been letting little bits of affection out, now and then, but I have all this love trapped and hidden, and I have to find a way to let it out. To _get_ it out, after it's gotten solidified inside me, like mining coal out of a mountain.

It could be as easy as loving Peeta. Knowing his good heart and his loyalty, and his warm kisses, and the safe harbor of his arms.

It could be as difficult as loving him, knowing that losing him would probably kill me. Knowing that I'm loath to give him the children he longs for, knowing that someday he might be so disappointed in my ungiving nature that he would, at long last, no longer love me.

The old Katniss shunned that risk. His eyes spoke to her, called her name, _knew_ her, and she turned away from that gaze. Too frightened, too selfish, too busy protecting that little hard kernel that was her heart. Called to, a thousand times, she never looked back.

Now I know that if Peeta stops calling me, I really will die. And it's the same with him – if he doesn't have me, the next time his mind goes away, it won't come back. We need each other.

I hug my twitchy bedfellow close. He jumps. "Can't sleep?" I ask.

"I didn't mean to wake you," he says guiltily.

"I don't know what woke me up," I say. "But you're not sleeping. What's wrong?"

He doesn't answer right away. He exhales through his nose, and I understand that he doesn't want to admit why he can't sleep. Because I know. The answer is tenting his sleep pants just below where my arm lies on his stomach.

"It's this, isn't it?" I move my hand, brushing lightly over it, and he jumps again.

"Katniss," he says, reproaching me. "Not fair."

"Well," I say, hesitating to even bring it up. I don't know how it'll go over. "Can I help?"

"_No_," he says, and moves my hand very firmly to someplace innocuous.

"Why not?" I ask.

"It's my problem," he says. "Just forget about it. It'll calm down in a while."

"You're not sleeping. Really, I think the simplest thing to do would be for us to just... take care of it." I have not really the faintest idea of what I mean, except that I_ don't_ mean, "have sex." But he'd used that phrase last night, so I guess he knows what I mean.

"No," he says again.

"I want to help," I say. And it's true. Not just because I'm curious. Because I want to get closer. "Don't be so unselfish all the time! You make me feel bad."

He sighs. "Katniss... this is embarrassing enough. I don't want to have you touch me out of _pity_, okay?"

"Oh, for crying out loud, it isn't pity! I just... I want to touch you." I do. I really do. I think if I know what I'm looking forward to, it'll be easier.

Besides which, this is Peeta. Whose scars and nightmares and regrets match mine. Who feels, in some way I'd never planned, like the other half of me. And I do, sincerely, want him. Even if I still don't know _quite _what I'm going to do with him once I've got him.

I can tell he's wavering now. He says nothing. I don't waste my breath talking him into it. For all his sweetness, Peeta can be rock-stubborn, and I am too flustered to talk him around. I can't be bothered to find the right words, which would probably take me hours even if I _weren't_ flustered. I just do it: I slide my hand under his waistband, sneaking in, and there he is. He moans and presses upward into my hand. Instantaneous, almost reflex.

It doesn't feel the way I expected. For one thing, it's this strange miracle of hard and soft, steel under silk, and touching it makes my heart pound. It's actually hot. Not enough to burn me, but it's considerably warmer than normal body temperature. For another, it's far too_ big._ It wouldn't fit where I know it's supposed to go, I know it wouldn't. It's all of six inches long, maybe more, and I cannot imagine that whatever I have between my legs is going to accommodate it.

"_Katniss_," he says, his voice gone low and scratchy. I settle in next to him again, and we kiss, deep open kisses that taste like tears and surrender. I can barely breathe. He shoves his clothing out of the way and kicks it off. I can finally see him in the dim light creeping in from the other end of the hall, and it's an impressively weird-looking thing, that male part of him that is _definitely_ not going to fit the place it's supposed to go, and that I think I want there anyway. We kiss and kiss, gasping into each other's mouths, and I stroke and he moves his hips, and it seems that in no time at all his whole body is locked and rigid, convulsing as he groans my name twice more, and then completely limp.

My fingers are sticky, so I wipe them as unobtrusively as I can on the sheet as I lean up and kiss his face – gently, sweetly, on his forehead and cheeks and lips.

"I love you," he whispers, and slides straight into sleep from there, arm still around me.

Loving him is not just about this, I think. He needs to know. Because he is who he is, he will always need the words. I'm like Haymitch – my first inclination is always to act, to _signal_ rather than _say_. But Peeta, who thinks in word pictures, does not read my symbolic hieroglyphics very easily. I will have to give him the words, and it will be hard work for me, but he deserves them.

I inch the covers back up around us. I say his name once, and lay my head on his shoulder, and then I'm gone too, into a dream place where willow leaves hide me and I feel safe.

Morning light wakes me, and for just a second I don't know where I am. Up in that willow tree in my first Games, hearing the Careers talk about me below? Something about a willow... but I feel _safe._ I blink. My head is on Peeta's shoulder, we're all wrapped up together, and he's naked.

Some of what we did last night comes back to me, and my first inclination is to flee. It's silly to be scared, but we were so close last night, and I'm suddenly needing space, a lot of space, around me.

I should go hunt, anyway.

I disentangle myself, very slowly, from Peeta, who stirs but doesn't wake. He's snoring a little, and I have to smile. How often does he sleep deeply enough to snore? I slip out of the bed and out of the room as quietly as I can.

On the way out, I remember that he needs the words, so I leave via the kitchen. I know he'll be here sooner rather than later. I can't find any paper, and I'm kind of in a hurry anyway, so I scatter a layer of flour on the counter top and write in it with my finger:

_P, gone hunting_

_1000 kisses_

_Real _

_K_

I slip home in the semi-dark, smiling, and dress for the woods.

**The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter **

**(from the Chinese poet Li Po, translated by Ezra Pound)**

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever and forever.

Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,

You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,

And you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden;

They hurt me. I grow older.

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,

And I will come out to meet you

As far as Cho-fu-sa.

**A/N #2: Katniss would almost certainly not have known this poem. But she reminds me a great deal of the letter-writer, who used to scowl at being paired (probably not by her choice) with her husband, and then realizes that she loves him, and misses him when he's gone, and now is willing to go to great lengths to be reunited with him.**

_**Forever and forever and forever...**_


	15. Chapter 15: Wondrous Fair

**A/N: I've been switching POVs around, so that I rarely do more than one from the same character in a row. And to be honest with you, I find it easier to get into Peeta's head. But it seems to me that Katniss is the one whose feelings and attitudes are undergoing adjustment here, so she's the more interesting POV at the moment. Next chapter will be hers, too.**

**Warning: solo girly smut, not particularly graphic. As always, I don't claim to own any of THG. I just appreciate it.**

Chapter 15: Wondrous Fair

_Katniss_

I head for the woods, carrying my bow and quiver and game bag, as well as a smaller bag in case I run across some berries. I should be tired, but I'm not. I feel alive, the best I've felt since –

Just as soon as I've thought that phrase, I feel awful again. Because the last time I felt so good in my body,it was just before the Quarter Quell. When Haymitch and Peeta and I had spent all that time training. That was the last time Peeta was really well and whole, too, except for his leg.

And Prim was alive then. And District Twelve was whole.

The pain of what comes from just thinking about how good my body feels this morning... this is my life now, I think. Scars and pieces. If I see how good something is, I always notice what's missing as well.

I have to lean over on my knees and get a good breath. I can't start keeping track of what's changed since then, I _can't_, or I won't get anything done out here. I say a couple of pledges, promising to live well on Prim's behalf. On Madge's. On Peeta's father's. For the kids I went to school with, their parents. For Darius. (Oh, God, _Darius_.) That's all I allow myself mental space for this morning, only people who had lived in District Twelve. That is enough to grieve for right now. Everyone else will have to wait, or I'll be catatonic under the pokeweed and absolutely no good for anything, much less feeding Peeta and Haymitch and myself.

_Peeta_. A delicious shudder runs up my spine, remember how he'd felt under my hand last night: hot velvet over a shaft sturdy as an ax handle.

And _that_ makes me think of Johanna, Johanna and her axes, Johanna talking about my Victory Tour velvet dress before stripping out of that tree costume and down to her skin, and jumping into an elevator car with Peeta and me. _Oooooh_, but that had made me so furious, the way Peeta's eyes had traveled once, quickly, over her body down to her feet and back up to her face, and then darted to my stormy expression. He'd grinned like an idiot at me, too, and that had made me even angrier –

It dawns on me that I had been _jealous_. That I'm _still_, somehow, furiously and completely jealous of his eyes resting on some other girl, and I hadn't even known.

I shake my head. Because this is silly. I want squirrels for dinner. Never mind that it's summer, and they're not fat now, they're skinny from running around and making little squirrel babies and eating everything they can get their paws on, I'm looking for squirrels.

It is silly to be jealous of Johanna. I think of her telling me in the Quell that she didn't care if I _was_ knocked up, she'd take my head off, and I laugh silently. Johanna is absolutely herself, all the time, and she feels like a friend. Maybe a grouchy older sister. I miss her.

I am trying to distract myself from thinking about Peeta. I can tell, because every time I stop deliberately thinking about something else (Johanna, squirrels, butter, tree costumes, my cleanup-crew work schedule), there he is in my head again. Looking at me with those summer-sky eyes or painting a portrait of Rue or kneading dough, or lying on his back all naked and scarred and beautiful, arching up into my hand with ecstasy on his face...

I shake my head again, and there's a faint chittering from up in a tree from the squirrel I have just disturbed, without bothering to know it was even there. Because I am clearly an idiot. Because I can't seem to think of anything this morning except Peeta. I make a sound of frustration. I'm being loud today, and I am scaring all the squirrels away.

And then I burst into laughter again. Was _this_ why he was always so loud in the woods, even before his leg injury? Too busy thinking about me? There's an unexpected warmth in my face, and in my stomach, as I think of Peeta thinking about me.

I shouldn't feel so happy. Prim is gone, and Peeta's father, and mine. But somehow, out here in the woods, in the sunshine, I feel... loved. It's almost like the sunshine is all three of them blessing me.

I decide to forgo the squirrels, and just go to the lake for some fish. I keep fishhooks and thin string in a small pouch attached to my game bag now, ever since I came back home with Mags' amazing knowledge of how to make them. It'll be a hike to the lake, but I'm up to it.

When I get there, I'm hot and sweaty, and the sun is well up in the sky. I set up a fishing rod with a sturdy stick, some string and one of Mags' best fishhooks, baited with one of the grubs I found under a rotten log in the woods. I take off boots and socks so I can sit with my toes in the water. I debate just a minute, and decide to take my pants off as well. I keep my torso covered, because my healing skin is very susceptible to sunburn, but I unbutton the shirt too. It's hot. Summer's beginning.

I sit peacefully just over the bank where a deep ripple flows by, one of my father's favorite fishing spots, and I relax, keeping a light hold on the fishing rod. I'm not out in the middle where the bigger fish live, but it almost doesn't matter. Anything would taste good out of this lake.

Within the first hour, I've caught three sunfish, smacking each one on the ground hard enough to kill it so it doesn't gasp for oxygen and die slowly. That's too cruel. These are well worth eating, and I'm pleased. I take the net fish bag out of my game bag, and plop the fish into it. Then I put it into a little protected pool to stay cool.

I'm hungry. The blackberries aren't ripe yet, and neither are the chokecherries, which despite their name are perfectly edible. I open the front pouch on the game bag and get out a small piece of venison jerky to chew on. I wander around the edge of the woods awhile, looking for one of the small patches of wild strawberries, because it is about time for some of them to be ripe.

_There's_ one – I sit down and pick all the ripe ones, eating about half of them. And there should be – yes, there's the bigger patch, right there. I pick all those ripe ones, too, putting them into the small berry pouch for later. Fish and strawberries, that will be a feast. Even better if I can find some katniss roots.

Which I do, plenty for three or four people, and plenty left to keep growing in this place. I'm elated. I fish a little longer and catch two more sunnies. That ought to be enough – and the sun is just past zenith, so I'll start home soon.

By now, though, I'm really hot, and the thought of putting on my warm trousers is not welcome. I decide I need a dip – a short one, so I don't damage my newly-grown skin with too much sun, and carefully take off my clothes before jumping into the lake.

It feels wonderful. The water strokes me without hands, and I swim underwater out almost to the center of the lake before coming back to the bank in a series of dives, just for fun. I get out and stretch out on the big flat rock to dry off a little before getting dressed.

I'm not there five minutes before the sun on my skin is hot, and the warmth is making me think of him again. Feeling rebellious, I embrace this growing heat in my abdomen, and I conjure him in my mind. His smile. His eyes, the softness of his hair under my fingers. His kiss. His strong arms. His smell. His sturdy thighs. The hair that grows in that soft patch at the small of his back.

And while I'm thinking of him, my hands are busy discovering my own body. It's been hard to look at myself, to see all the scars and burned places, all the ruined skin that makes me think of fire and how it consumes, but when I look at his burn scars all I feel is tenderness. There are places on his chest that have hair, and places that don't because of the new skin, but looking at him never repulses me. Never. And I start to think of my own body as a wonder, too.

The soft skin of my inner right arm. My hips and legs. My breasts, which are small and mostly escaped the burns. I touch them, thinking of how it would feel if it were his larger, smoother, hands holding them instead of mine. And somehow my hands wander down to that place between my thighs, caressing and exploring, and a soft exclamation escapes me at how good that feels. It's damp there, and not from the lake. From _me_.

I keep touching myself, finding all the sensitive spots. I want his hands there, too. And _him_. Solid, hot, velvet over wood, silk over steel, _all of him_, there in me. I don't even care whether it will fit or not, I want him.

I think of how his face looked last night when I touched him, and a moan almost like singing arches out of my throat as I'm suddenly falling over the edge of a cliff I didn't even know was there. My body contracts around that place where he's supposed to fit, pleasure on pleasure that only gradually fades.

So _that's_ what it feels like.

So that's what it felt like for him. _Oh_.

I sit up and realize I'd better get some clothes back on before I burn. I've been in the sun long enough. And I'd better get those fish home quick, too.

I jump into my clothes, grab my haul of food, start legging it for home. Home and Peeta. Whom I cannot _wait_ to see. I can't keep the smile off my face... it's like seeing him on TV, whole and healthy and beautiful, when I'd spent my first weeks in Thirteen thinking he was dead. I know that was the start of an awful time for him, but I decide I can hang on to that feeling, the absolute joy of knowing his good Peeta heart was still beating.

Did I start to love him then? I don't know.

Was it when I kissed him in the cave? Or on the beach? Or that time I hurt my ankle and he carried me up to bed and promised to stay with me always? When he nearly died in the Quell? Or the time that he told me to kill him, and I couldn't do it?

I may never know just when. But it may not matter, either.

I make it back to his house in record time, my eager steps carrying me toward home, and I go in through the kitchen calling his name in that special voice, the one my mother used to use for my father, the one I faked in our first Games. I don't have to fake it now. I am happy.

"Peeta!" I call. I put the fish in cold water in the sink, still in their mesh bag. I'll clean them in a few minutes. I set out the katniss roots and strawberries on the counter, and I notice that my flour-message of the morning, the one sending him a thousand real kisses, has been swept up. "Hey, Peeta! I'm home."

He doesn't answer. He must be out, probably with the cleanup crew. He usually works with them unless we've made plans to work on the book instead. He's been so excited that they're clearing the site of the bakery to build a new one; as he says, he can keep several families supplied with bread using the oven in this house, but to supply a town, he'll need big commercial ovens and a premises to put them in. And I'm excited that he's excited.

I go ahead and clean the fish, scraping scales off and removing entrails, before changing the cold water and putting them back in to stay cool. They'll be good breaded in cornmeal, which we have plenty of, and fried in a little oil, and the katniss roots don't take long to boil. I see four fresh loaves of plain wheat bread set out, smelling hearty and homelike. And strawberries are delicious at any time. It will be a good meal.

I go upstairs, wanting to change out of my hunting clothes and put on some of that skin cream I'm supposed to be using on my burns. _A sundress might feel nice and look pretty_, I think, and I almost laugh, because this is the very first time I've thought about the clothes I wear, other than considering whether they're weather-appropriate, since I came home. I've brought so many of the contents of my closets over here recently, bit by bit, that I'm sure to find something nice and cool. So many clothes were left behind after that Victory Tour...

I open the bedroom door, and there he is. He's sitting on the floor, against the footboard of the bed, holding a pillow and rocking back and forth, and his mind is _somewhere else_. Somewhere horrible, from the look on his face. And my heart falls right through my boots. "Oh, Peeta," I sigh, sadness and guilt overwhelming me. While I've been behaving like some depraved Capitol girl, with nothing better to do than be wanton, he's been struggling to hold on to himself.

I untie my boots and fling them off, as well as my socks. It's too hot up here on the second floor for long pants and long sleeves, so I toss those off as well. To replace them, I find a pair of athletic shorts and grab one of his t-shirts for comfort.

I don't know how long he's been like this. He had made up the bed and gotten dressed – a light blue button-down shirt with short sleeves, and khakis, his favorite summer outfit. There's a little flour on the shirt.

"Peeta," I say, getting down on the floor with him and taking his hand. "Peeta, it's me." He doesn't notice me. He only reluctantly lets me pull one hand away from the pillow. I rub it the way he massaged my hands that time he found me in Mother's closet, the way that Prim did when I was hurt.

By the time I've gotten that one hand relaxed he's stopped rocking back and forth, but he won't look at me. I pull the pillow out of his grasp, and he makes a frustrated noise, but I just plop myself right into his lap and take his head between my hands. "Peeta, it's me," I say softly. "It's Katniss." I know this is a risk. Sometimes when his mind goes away, it goes to places where my name is threatening.

"It's me, Katniss," I repeat. "Are you okay? Come back to me, Peeta." He's unresponsive, with his eyes staring holes through me. I feel like crying. Instead, I sing. I sing "The Meadow Song," that lullaby I sang for Rue and my darling Prim. I sing "The Hanging Tree." I sing "Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair," but since my father always changed the words when he sang it to my fair-haired mother, I change them for Peeta:

_Yellow is the color of my true love's hair,_

_His lips are something wondrous fair._

_The purest eyes and the gentlest hands,_

_I love the grass on where he stands._

_I love my love and well he knows_

_I love the grass on where he goes._

_If he on earth no more I see,_

_My life would quickly fade away._

By the time I've gotten through the second verse, he's with me again. Confused and blinking unsteadily at me, but _with_ me. And my throat closes up so completely in my gratitude, not another note will come out. Instead, I just kiss him. His forehead, his cheeks. His lips, something wondrous fair. I whisper his name against them.

I feel his hands on my waist, his mouth moving against mine. "I thought you were gone," he says, voice shaky. "I thought you left me."

"Why would you think that? How could I leave you?" I demand. "I just went hunting. Well, it turned out to be fishing."

"It felt like... like when you left me behind in the arena," he says in almost a monotone. "When the Capitol took me. I was so alone."

_Oh, Peeta_. My heart breaks a little bit. "I just went hunting. I'm sorry I was late getting back. I always come back. I will _always_ stay with you."

"Oh," he says, and a tremendous sigh gusts through him. "This morning you were gone. You usually leave me a note if I'm asleep when you go hunting."

"I did," I interrupt, but he keeps talking.

"And – and after last night, I thought... I thought you were disgusted. That I'd pushed too hard, that I'd ruined things – "

I interrupt again. "It was _my_ idea, you idiot! And I loved touching you. And I _did_ leave you a note." He shakes his head, puzzled. "I did! In the flour. I know you were in the kitchen. You made wheat loaves."

His eyebrows are drawn together in confusion. "What do you mean, 'in the flour'?"

I explain that I hadn't found paper this morning, and I just wrote with my finger in a little pile of spilled flour. "I did say I was going hunting. And..."

His mouth drops open. "I thought I spilled it. It never occurred to me it was a note."

We stare at each other in consternation for a minute, and my shoulders drop. Tears sting my eyes. "Oh, Peeta. And I've been so happy all day, thinking of my note making you happy. Thinking I was clever. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry." I press my forehead against his.

"Well," he says, with an air of making the best of things, "it was probably the most unusual note ever written in flour. 'Gone hunting'!" And he smiles ruefully.

"That's not all it said," I protest, indignant. His eyebrows quirk up. "I sent you a thousand kisses." He blinks. "One thousand kisses," I repeat. "Real ones. I wrote that."

"This story keeps getting weirder," he says, bemused. "First you don't bother to find paper. Then you waste food, which you _never_ do, and _then_ you say things in this flour note that you never say in real life." This stings. My throat convulses, and I want to slap him. I go out of my way to do something nice, something that hangs my feelings out like a banner on the wind, and he _makes fun of me_. I open my mouth to make some cutting remark, but I can't think of any. And my voice won't work anyway.

"Hey," he says in a different voice. "Hey, you're upset. I didn't mean to upset you." He rubs my cheek with his thumb.

"I didn't mean to upset _you_," I say, and then the tears finally spill. "Didn't mean – flashback – sorry – "

"Ssh, ssh," he says, patting me. "Ssh, it's all right. I'm here. And you're here, and we're okay. Hush, love, it's fine."

It takes me a few minutes to stop crying, and then I just cling to him. I sigh, suddenly exhausted by the roiling emotions. "I'm so tired, Katniss," he confesses. "These things just wear me out."

"I know. Me too." I stand up and hold out my hand. "We need a nap." He gets up, lurching a little on his bad leg. I help him find more comfortable clothes, and I only stare a little while he changes into them. I help him take off his prosthesis – he can shower in it, and it's designed to be worn all the time, but he prefers to sleep without it.

And we lie down on top of the covers in the warm room and nestle together like little birds in a nest. I kiss his shoulder through his shirt, and I can hear by his breathing he's almost asleep already.

I spare two minutes to mentally kick myself for not looking harder for paper, and then I'm drifting off too. I dream of the lake, how it feels like lover's hands against my skin.

The rays of late afternoon sun slanting through the room wake me. It's almost supper time, and I need to get up and cook. "You're awake," he says, stretching lazily. "I just woke up a minute ago. We've slept a long time."

"Guess we needed it," I say, and kiss his cheek before snuggling back down into the hollow of his neck. I feel so content. "This is my favorite place in the world. The best place I've ever, ever been."

I've confused him without meaning to. "Where? Twelve? Or this house?"

"In your arms," I tell him.

Those arms tighten around me, and I'm starting to think that maybe we'll just skip dinner and stay in bed. But the front door bangs open and then closed, and someone with heavy footsteps stomps around downstairs.

"Haymitch is here," Peeta says, and sits up. "I invited him for dinner yesterday. Hey, you're sunburned – your nose is pink."

Curses. I sit up too. "Guess I'd better go cook those fish."

"Oh, you got fish?" Peeta perks up. He likes trout best, but they're hard to catch.

"Yeah, sunnies. I'll cook them. They're already cleaned."

I dash into the bathroom and wash my face, to the accompaniment of Haymitch yelling up the stairs, "Hey, lovebirds! Where's dinner?"

Peeta heads down the steps with his slightly uneven gait. "Hey. We're going to go cook now," I can hear him saying. "Be patient, willya? Or make yourself useful for once, and set the table."

Haymitch says something I can't catch as I dry my face, and then as I go out into the hall, I hear Peeta tell him, "I had a bad day. I needed a nap."

"I told you she'd be back," Haymitch says. We all go into the kitchen.

"If I don't come back by supper time, you'll know I've fallen into a sinkhole or gotten eaten by bears," I tell them. I look straight at Peeta, who's pouring oil into the big skillet, and remind him, "I'm not going to leave you. I'm not going to do that."

"Not even when you're mad at him?" Haymitch asks, smirking.

"Not even." I think a minute as I cut up the katniss roots and put them in a pot with just enough water to cover. "Well, I might run off into the woods when I get mad, but not permanently. I'll come back. I promise."

I start the pot of katniss roots boiling. I fillet the fish and coat pieces in flour and cornmeal, with dill seasoning, before frying them. Peeta slices bread and makes a salad with lettuce and radishes that Haymitch has brought us. I don't ask where he got them.

Dinner is delicious – I never ate so well as this at home, until Peeta started teaching me about seasonings. Dessert is my wild strawberries with some shortbread cookies Peeta made a few days ago, and we have mint tea with it.

Haymitch is polite for once, and he doesn't drink himself silly during the meal either. When Peeta gets up to go to the pantry, Haymitch looks pointedly at me and raises his eyebrows. I scowl back and whisper, "None of your business!" He throws his head back and laughs without making any noise. I keep glaring, although when Peeta comes back with the cookies I smooth out my expression.

"So what did you do today?" Haymitch asks me, mock-conversationally, over mint tea. (Which he dumped three heaping spoonfuls of sugar into, I noticed. _And_ he ate about nine cookies. His sweet tooth must be enormous.)

"Well, I went fishing. Obviously." I glare at Haymitch again.

"Without leaving a note, apparently," he points out. "Bad idea, sweetheart. He's still a little blue around the lips."

I open my mouth to protest, and but I don't feel like going through the whole thing with him. He doesn't need to know. I glare some more.

"She did leave me a note," Peeta says, placating him. "It just got lost. It's not her fault I had a flashback. I don't have to know where she is every minute." Haymitch's eyebrows rise so high they're practically on the ceiling, but he purses his lips and says nothing as Peeta gets up again and starts to run water in the sink for dishes. He mimes writing something, then points at me.

I catch his eye, and then jerk my thumb at the door, scowling again.

"Better watch it or your face will freeze like that, sweetheart," he says to me, and smirks, but he gets up and carries his plate to the sink. "Thanks for dinner, kid," he says to Peeta.

"_Hey_. _ I _collected dinner. _ I_ cooked," I remind him.

He winks at me and sneers at the same time. "Yeah, but _you_ didn't invite me."

Peeta laughs. "Better thank her anyway, Haymitch. If you want to be invited back, that is."

Haymitch turns back to me. "Thanks for dinner, sweetheart. It was almost edible. I appreciate your not poisoning me."

"Don't push your luck, old man," I say back. And he's out the door, but I could swear that I saw him smile just now.

Peeta laughs again. "Be nice to Haymitch," he says. "He's saved your butt repeatedly."

"I'm as nice to him as he deserves," I say. "Haymitch and me? We understand each other. Don't worry."

Peeta and I wash the dishes, dry them, put them away. Then he turns to me. "Okay, I want to see this note that you say you left me this morning. In the flour." He hands me a scoop full of flour and gestures to the clean countertop.

I sprinkle the flour as evenly as I can over it, and write the same message that I had written this morning:

_P, gone hunting_

_1000 kisses_

_Real_

_K_

I step back so he can see, and I'm gratified to observe the the way he swallows and blinks rapidly. I've moved him. He looks up at me with shiny eyes. "So can I have my kisses now?"

And I smile and come into his arms, the best place I know.

**A/N #2: "Black is the Color" is a traditional Celtic folk song that was adapted, with slightly different words (as with most folk songs, there are about a zillion versions of the lyrics) and a different tune, in the American Appalachians, which were settled largely by Irish, Scots, and English as well as Germans – "Standard Colonial Mix," as I like to call my genetic background. The part of Kentucky where District Twelve is supposedly located is JUST the other side of the mountain range from where my family's lived since about 1760; we're on the east side of the Appalachians, and Twelve is on the west. The words I've used here are a variation of the ones my mother used to sing to me.**

**If you go find the song on YouTube, don't bother with any Irish versions – though they're lovely, the melody is wrong. Joan Baez' version, though not _quite_ right, is the closest I've found on YT to the haunting melody I know. A distinctive and unusual feature of Appalachian music is the way that the melody does not resolve, and that's the case with "Black is the Color." You just want to keep repeating it because it never really feels finished. It leaves an ache of beauty behind it.**


	16. Chapter 16: Da Mi Basia Mille

**A/N: Okay, so you've been waiting for this ever since you finished Catching Fire, haven't you? ADMIT IT. Thanks to Ms Collins for setting up the framework so that we can make our own fun imagining what_ really _happened. Probably more fun than just reading it, right? I think so. At least, I'm having fun with this.**

**WARNING: SMUT. Smut smut smut. Fluffy lemony cheesecakey smut. Language not too graphic, but this baby has earned its M rating. **

Chapter 16: _Da Mi Mille Basia_

_Katnis_

"So can I have my kisses now?" he asks, eyes wet from emotion.

"Yes," I say, and step into the shelter of his arms.

The first kiss is a greeting, the second is a promise. The third, and all the kisses after that, are pure pleasure. I lose track in the delight of his mouth on mine, the feel of his body solid against me, the knowledge that he is my rock.

When he pulls away from me just enough to shift his weight, I notice that it's gotten dark in the house, with only the little task light on over the stove. We've been here a long time, but not long enough. I reach back up to kiss him again, but he stops me, smiling. "So how many is that?"

"_What?_"

"How many kisses?" he repeats with good-humored patience. "You promised me a thousand. What are we up to now?"

I laugh a little. "I lost count."

"Yeah, me too. But I do _not_ intend to be cheated," he says, mock sternly, with a wicked smile that sends arrows of heat all over my body. "You better deliver on your promise. Guess we should start over again."

"Guess so," I agree. "Let's go sit down. It's more comfortable." And I pull him into the parlor and sit him on the couch.

He pulls me down to sit on his lap, and I smile against his mouth. I love it when he takes charge, when he shows me his real desires instead of the "if it's not too much trouble" sort. Besides, in my mind, it's as if I'm only allowed to want him as much as he wants me... as much as he _shows_ me he wants me.

So I'm pulling for him to let go of his control, to not be the gentleman for once. But I can't _say_ that – if I did, it would still just be Peeta doing what pleased me. I want, for the first time, to push him into showing me his real desires.

I think of his sadness when I put forth the idea of the public proposal after the Victory Tour, the pain in his eyes because it wasn't real. But _this_ will be real. I silently pledge it to him, to let every kiss and every word and every act of commitment be real. Every gesture of love, _real_.

"Real, Peeta," I say against his mouth, between kisses, and his hands tighten on my waist.

He settles me more firmly astride his lap, and now I can feel him against me, hot and solid and wonderful. I pull back to look at him. There's just enough light coming in that I can see his expression, at once fierce and dreamy. "How many kisses is that?" he asks, and that flash of deviltry sparks across his face again.

I've lost track again. "I don't know," I say, and give him his wicked smile back. "Why don't you tell me when we get to a thousand, and I'll stop then?"

"We'll have to start over," he says. "I'm not sure where one kiss ends and the next begins."

"We could just stop counting," I say.

"No good. I'm holding you to your end of the bargain." He leans up and kisses me, a wild kiss that causes all my nerve endings to vibrate. "Or, tell you what: you give me a thousand years of kisses, and we'll call it square?"

Maybe in a thousand years I could learn to love him the way he deserves, as much as he deserves. "Deal," I say, and then the conversation stops.

The kissing is the way it was on the beach in the Quell, desperate and uncontainable and so, so sweet. I love the taste of his mouth, the way his hair feels against my forehead when I kiss his neck. I love the way his hands are touching me everywhere: my collarbone, down my sides to my thighs, back up over my hips to my waist. And the way he tugs my t-shirt (his t-shirt, really) out of the way and caresses the scars across my ribcage, and it doesn't make me self-conscious. I wish briefly that I'd put on something pretty before dinner, but then he whispers, "You're so beautiful," into my ear, and clothes don't matter whatsoever. I can't stop kissing him. That strange hunger has intensified, and I feel it all over me, the urge to touch and be touched, kiss and be kissed, to get closer and closer and closer until there is no "closer" to be had.

I pull off the t-shirt. He's seen me in just a bra before, but this time the sight has meaning. It means that I'm showing myself to him, to _only_ him, and trusting him to be accepting and tender. Because he is who he is, my Peeta. His face shows me that he knows what I'm doing. It's exactly what he did last night, stripping off his own clothes to let me see all of him, trusting me to be tender and accepting. His face is so full of wonder that I feel even more beautiful.

Together we take his shirt off, and we go back to the kisses that set my blood on fire. I don't stop touching him wherever I can – his shoulders, his chest, his arms. He kisses down my neck, and I hear myself gasp as his fingers fumble with the catch of my bra. He slides it off my shoulders, gently, and it's his turn to inhale sharply as my breasts are bared to his gaze. "Oh," he whispers, and cups them in tender hands. Presses feathery kisses to them.

"Peeta," I plead, unable to articulate my desire for more of this. He becomes bolder, caressing me more firmly, kissing down my collarbone, and then takes my nipple into his mouth.

I nearly fall over backward. I had never known there were strings connecting my nipples and my private womanly parts. He kisses my breasts, and it resonates lower. I had no idea. This is so balanced on the edge of joy and pain – it feels so intense – I know what he meant when he said he wanted to freeze a moment and live in it forever. I'd live here.

Until even this is not enough to satisfy the hunger for more of him. "_Peeta_," I plead again, and he turns and tips me so that I land backward on the couch. I see his expression, and he looks almost like a stranger: my Boy with the Bread has grown fierce and wild, the heat behind his eyes flaming up like a bonfire. I shudder with desire, with the strangeness and force of him, and I can't help moaning at the way he settles himself between my thighs like he belongs there. Like it's home. The way his arms feel like home to me.

This time he doesn't seek permission or wait for me to take the lead. He pulls my shorts off, and then his own, sliding down a little ways on the couch. His hand goes right to that womanly place, rubbing me through my panties. I can feel how damp they are against me. "Katniss," he whispers into my neck, and then goes back to kissing my breasts. His fingers find their way inside my underwear, making me arch my back and cry out, which I never meant to do but can't stop myself. "Show me how," he says, his voice low and hoarse, and I pull the panties off, wriggle them off my legs.

"_Show me_," he says again, and caresses me there.

"Wait," I say, and pull him back up so I can kiss him again. "So sweet, kissing you is so sweet," I tell him between kisses, and his fingers are teasing me in ways that make me desperate. And then I do take his hand and guide him: like this. _Yes, like this, yes, yes, yes..._ I am lost in a swirling sea of pleasure myself, but some part of my brain registers his ragged breath, the way he moves jerkily against my thigh, as if he knows he shouldn't but can't stop himself every time.

He hits the perfect spot. Lingers there, rubbing me gently, and I cry out. I can feel my body locking down on him, on where his fingers are, and then a tidal wave of sensation hits me, and I drown in it.

When I can breathe again, he is panting into my neck, and he is positioned in that spot that feels like home to him, with only his boxers and his hand between us. "Katniss," he says, reaching up to kiss my mouth and my cheek, "oh, Katniss, you have to stop me. I can't stop. Can't." He sounds absolutely desperate.

"Don't stop," I tell him. "I want you, don't stop." I tug at his underwear, and he pulls it down, and we both moan at the way our bodies feel together there.

A strange picture comes to my mind as he kicks his boxers off: I am an ancient city with walls of white marble, opening its gates to a conquering army. No shots fired, no fires set, no destruction or violence, only the banners whipping in the wind and the citizens' joyous shouts of welcome. A carpet of flowers at the gates. A thousand kisses floating on the air.

I'm ready.

"Are you sure?" His voice is urgent, ragged, his breath hissing around the edges of it. I feel him there at the gates, silk over steel, this boy who's become a man. _My _man. Real. _Real_.

"Kiss me again," I say back, and he does, a tender kiss that is nevertheless about to flash over into flames.

"Are you _sure_?" he asks again. "I don't have any – I mean, I don't want to make you pregnant - "

"Don't worry. I need you," I say. "I need you now, Peeta, please."

So he comes home to me. Slides in a little way, and then we're both making wordless cries of pain at the pressure on sensitive parts. "Don't stop," I gasp. He doesn't fail me. He pushes forward, and I actually feel that little piece of skin yield.

It does hurt – a burning, stinging sort of pain. I feel invaded and a little panicky. _This is Peeta_, I tell myself. _This is the sweetest boy in the world. Peeta will never hurt me._

It still hurts a little – a very little – and the sensation of fullness is beyond odd. And I was wrong: all of him fits. The thought of that makes my blood itch under my skin, and I pull him closer. We look into each other's eyes, and I see my whole life there. He rocks into me slowly, but I can feel by the tension of his shoulders under my hands, by the way his breaths are raspy and half moans, that he will not last long. "Come to me, Peeta," I whisper, and he covers my mouth with his and begins to shudder all down his spine.

He feels suddenly absolutely huge inside me, and he groans my name like he's dying. "Katniss, _Katniss_," he groans against my mouth, and there is a jet of heat in the place where we're locked together, and he collapses atop me.

In the quiet that follows, I can't hold all my emotion inside me. There is so _much,_ equal parts joy and regret and wonder and loss and satisfaction and excitement and pain and hope. Tears slip from my eyes, sliding down into my ears.

I feel every fraction of every inch of movement as he withdraws from my body, slumping down with his head on my shoulder. He's panting from effort, but that eases, and with astonishment I see that he has actually gone to sleep. I feel the blood zipping around all my extremities, even my toes are tingling, and I feel strong enough to flip a mountain upside down, and he _goes to sleep_. It's astounding.

I shake my head a little and stroke his hair. _My Peeta_, I think, and I can't help smiling.

In just a few moments, he stirs. Stretches. Pulls himself up to a kneeling position between my legs, stroking his hands down my thighs. He's flushed and heavy-eyed, stroking his eyes languidly down my body in the same way he moves his hands, and then he stops with a jerk. "You're _bleeding_," he says, appalled. "There's blood on your leg."

"Really?" I'm surprised. I can't feel it. "It doesn't hurt any more. I feel fine. Better than fine."

"_I hurt you_," he says, and the flush has receded from his face, leaving him pale. The light is behind him and I can't see his expression well, but his eyes look like black holes.

It can't be that bad. "I'm not still bleeding, am I? I'll bet it's stopped now." His mouth drops open as I grab his right hand and bring it to my center, moving our fingers over the spot that stings just a bit. "Check and see." He lifts his hand up into the light to look, and there is the tiniest smear of red-brown there. "See? Just a scratch. You didn't hurt me."

He says nothing, frozen there in his kneeling position, and I suddenly worry that he's fighting some shiny memory. I sit up and take him urgently by the shoulders. "Peeta? Are you all right?" I kiss him, feeling his chest heave against mine, then pull back to see his face, in which fear and wonder are fighting for possession.

His voice shakes when he speaks. "You love me. Real or not real?"

"Real," I tell him. "Real, real, real."

"_Say it_," he whispers. He always needs the words.

I say them. "I love you." I take his hands and make it formal. "Peeta Mellark, I love you. Forever and forever and forever." Tears spill out of his eyes, and out of mine too as we kiss again, raw and tender, sealing the bargain. I change my mind:_ this_ is the moment I want to live in.

**A/N #2: _Da Mi Mille Basia_ means, "Give me a thousand kisses," in Latin. Famous poem by Catullus. You should look it up.**


	17. Chapter 17: Even for the Moment

**A/N: Okay, so this is the last in this string of Katniss chapters for awhile. I meant to stop after "Da Mi Basia Mille," but my mind kept showing me the next reel of the movie, so here it is. Warning: some smut.**

Chapter 17:

Katniss

It goes all night long, start and stop and sleep, start and finish and sometimes start again. I love being so close to him. Just thinking about it makes my blood rush to the surface.

He's sleeping right now, as dawn reaches pink fingers into the room. I lie there on the pillow for a moment and just look at him, at how beautiful he is. His tousled fair hair, so soft under my fingers. His eyelashes, long enough to get tangled up in. The lovely shape of his mouth, his strong jaw. His shoulders and chest and arms, so solid, regaining their strength as he heaves rocks and shovels dirt with the cleanup crews. The flat plane of his stomach. The way his body hair leads in a line down to that male part of him that so fascinates me (it changes! Nothing of mine does that). It looks soft and peaceful now, nothing like the beast driving me crazy last night.

Where was I? Oh, yes. His sturdy thighs. I study his injured leg, where it ends. I love this part of him, too, and all his scars and burns. In some ways, we match.

It's hard to take my eyes off him, but I see the dawn advancing and I know that if we're going to eat anything I bring home, I'll need to do it soon. I did set two traps along my trapline yesterday, before I gave up on hunting and went to the lake. I should go check them, anyway.

Remembering the fiasco of yesterday's note, I decide to wake him up. But _after_ I put on clothes. Because if I wake him up and we're both still naked, I'll wind up staying and we'll have to get some food from the butcher instead. Which we can do, certainly, but I'm not really ready to face people today.

So I dress, and lie back down on top of the covers before kissing his face. "Peeta, wake up," I say softly and kiss him again. He blinks, smiles, reaches for me. When his fingers find fabric, he frowns.

"No, _stay_," he pleads. "Don't go."

"I'll come back. Soon as I can, okay?"

"Stay," he pleads again, and I really don't want to go when he looks this sweet.

"I have to check my traps. We need food today." I kiss his mouth once, evade his arms, and roll off the bed. "I promise I'll be back by noon. Probably sooner. Go back to sleep if you want."

He sighs, and sits up. "No, I should go bake while you're gone. So I'll have it done when you get home."

I steal one more glance before leaving.

Both my traps are full today; both have rabbits in them. I go ahead and field-dress them, but I don't reset the traps because I want some flexibility for tomorrow. I'd like to be able to laze about in bed with him for as long as we want.

I find a few more patches of wild strawberries, and check the progress of the blackberries, which are still three or four weeks from ripening. I dig up a few wild onions for seasoning; they're still small and green, but a few go a long way because they're pungent. I look around some more for something else to bring home, something relatively quick.

Ah, there. I see the lacy tops of wild carrots. They're not bloomed out yet, but the foliage is distinctive. I dig up a goodly number – no point being careful with them, they proliferate easily and it's early in the season – and head back with eagerness.

I've got food, now I need my Peeta. I'm smiling all the way home.

When I get there, I hear the water running inside. He must be in the shower. I skin and dress the rabbits on the lean-to porch, on the little butcher-block table Greasy Sae found for me. I think she traded some rabbits for it. (There's a guy in town who makes stuff out of wood, a former Seam boy named Joss. His younger brother Jacky used to be in my class at school, but I think Jacky stayed in Thirteen.)

I go ahead and cut the rabbits into serving pieces, and head into the kitchen. Sae showed me how, if you brown meat before putting it into a stew, it adds flavor, so I heat some oil in the iron skillet and start the rabbit pieces cooking.

There are two dozen cheese buns on cooling racks on the counter, and I smile at this wordless message of love. _He was thinking about me_.

The rabbit is browned and going into the stewpot by the time Peeta comes into the kitchen, wet hair combed back. He smiles hugely at me and takes me into his arms. I hold him tight. "I missed you."

"I missed you too. I _hate_ being away from you," he says, and he starts kissing me as desperately as if he hasn't seen me for months. I kiss back, feeling my knees get weak, but when he starts pulling my hunting clothes off I stop him.

"Hey, I need a shower too," I say. "I'm sweaty."

"Doesn't matter," he says, his voice pitched low the way it gets when he's aroused. "It's just sweat. Just bodies. Just _us_." He starts kissing my neck and my breasts, and there was something I was going to do in here, something about stew... "Let's go to bed," he says, and leads me out of the kitchen and up the stairs, our clothing making a trail behind us.

We don't, in fact, make it to the bed. Instead, he pins me up against the wall in the upstairs hall, unable to wait any longer. His arms are so strong, and I lock my legs around his waist, and it doesn't take long before he's crying out my name.

And then I take a shower. And then we go back to bed, and it's like the night all over again. We make a lot of discoveries. We make a lot of love.

Later in the day, we're sitting up against the headboard drinking cold chamomile tea and eating the cheese buns he made for me earlier, having momentarily exhausted ourselves again.

I feel light, like I could fly away on a breath of wind. But I'd rather stay here.

"You do know that we're getting crumbs all over the sheets," I say, pointing to the debris.

"Yes, but we're going to have to change the sheets anyway," Peeta points out, and waggles his eyebrows comically at me. "I mean, they're a mess. Wrinkles. Sweat. Other stuff." I roll my eyes and he laughs. "I'm hoping we're going to have to change the sheets a lot."

"_Great_, more laundry." I roll my eyes again, but I can't help smiling. He knows I love sleeping on clean sheets.

"Last bite," he says, holding out the last half of a cheese bun to me. "Here."

"That's not one bite," I say, eyeing the pastry. "I can't get all that in my mouth."

"Says who?" he asks, and looks at me sidelong.

I bat at his hand, blushing. "Oh, _pfff._"

He waggles his eyebrows again. "I bet you can."

"Ha. You think it's bigger than it really is," I say, and then I crack up, remembering that as late as the day before, I'd thought he wouldn't fit inside me.

"Jeesh. Complaints already," he says, shaking his head. I explain my nervous misconception, and he laughs so hard he drops the last piece of bun. "You really thought that? Really?"

"Well, _yes_. It's not like I had any experience with the matter."

"It's not like you went looking for it, either," he says, reasonably. He picks up the cheese bun morsel. "Ugh, this is squished. Sorry."

"It's okay, I'm full anyway," I tell him.

"Well, you _were_. Full of _me _– just a little while ago, anyway." He ducks, laughing, as I pretend to slap him. This is ridiculous, listening to him crack bawdy jokes just as if we've been doing this sort of thing for years. It should irritate me, but it doesn't – probably because the last thing he is in bed is bawdy. He's tender, passionate, joyous, but not raunchy.

"Wait a minute here," I say sternly. "Exactly what kind of 'experience with the matter' did _you_ have? You seemed pretty... sure of yourself."

He laughs again. "C'mon, Katniss, I had brothers." I shrug, giving him a puzzled look. "Guys_ talk_, you know? About girls. I knew what girl-parts looked like before I was fourteen."

"How?" If he'd had a look at a real girl before me, I'll eat the sheets, crumbs and all.

"Banner drew me a diagram. With labels." He grins at my dumbfounded expression. "And Ryen told me that if I could get a girl's bra off and manage to get my tongue on her nipples, I could probably get laid." He looks at me smugly for a minute. "Close your mouth, you're letting in flies."

"What did the 'labels' say?" I'm suspicious.

"Ohhh... _you_ know..." he waves a hand airily, but the corner of his mouth is tucked in and I can tell he's about to shock me again. "Like, well, 'bullseye.' And 'gates of paradise.' And – " he shoots me another one of those laughing sideways looks – "'joy button.'"

I'm not as shocked as I might have been before the past twenty-four hours. Because he did have a lot better idea of what he was doing than I did. "And what did you _do_ with this miraculous diagram? Study it? Frame it and put it on your wall?" I gesture to the framed drawings on his bedroom wall.

"Oh, I jerked off every time I looked at it," he says, matter-of-factly.

Just when I think I'm not shockable anymore, he comes out with something new. I feel my eyes get huge. He laughs again. "Aw, c'mon, Katniss, I was _fourteen_. What _else_ was I going to do with it?"

I shrug, shaking my head in wonder. _Guys_. It's almost like they're another species.

"I was picturing you, mostly." He kisses me.

"Wait a minute," I say again. "_Mostly_?"

"There _are_ other girls in the world," he says, eyes twinkling. "Banner dated this one girl... I can't remember her name, but she had these _amazing_ breasts." I punch him on the bicep, scowling. He's trying not to laugh as he keeps talking. "So did Dorie Prester."

I punch him again. Grab the pillow and slug him with it. He's laughing so hard he can barely defend himself. "Ooh, jealous, are we?" he teases me.

"Yes," I say fiercely. Because I am.

And he softens immediately. "You know there was never anybody for me but you. You know that, Katniss." I do know. I lean over and give him a good long passionate kiss. He sighs. There's suddenly a sad, lost look in his eyes, and his lip trembles.

"You miss them, don't you? Your brothers." I kiss his forehead.

"Of course I do." He's silent for a minute. Reaches for my hand. "Guess we're going to have to be family for each other."

"Sounds nice." I think of other people I could call 'family,' besides my mother. Johanna. Annie. Maybe Sae and Mamie. Hazelle and Posy, Rory and Vick. I let my mind touch very briefly on Gale, remembering him swinging Posy up onto his shoulders, and there's a flash of pain and jealousy. Gale still _has _his family. But I don't want to think about Gale now.

And then I realize I've left the obvious person off the list. He's unreliable and rude and selfish and truculent, but if I need him he'll come through. Haymitch, of course.

I lean over to kiss Peeta, and his smile comes back. "You know what's funny?" I ask him, this thought having just occurred to me. "You knew what my girl-parts were going to look like before I did. In fact, I've never seen them." He looks skeptical. "Well, even if had occurred to me to look, I can't lean over that far."

His eyebrows go up. "Huh. Want the mirror? I have a little one somewhere."

It honestly doesn't matter all that much to me. It's just idle curiosity anyway. "You could draw me," I suggest, and for once I am gratified to see him look shocked.

"No," he says, and he shivers. "If I took to drawing your hoo-ha, we would never get out of this bed. Because I'd need to draw from real life. And then I'd want to touch you. And be inside you. Over and over again."

"We've done that already today," I remind him, trying not to smile.

"No, we got out of bed," he insists. "You brought the rabbits home. I made cheese buns. I guarantee you we wouldn't be eating cheese buns ever again if I decided to spend time drawing _that_. Probably take me three years to finish a simple line drawing."

I _tsk_ at him. "Imagine that."

He adds dramatically, "We might _starve_."

"We might still starve," I tell him. "Tonight, anyway. I put the rabbit in the stew pot, but I think I forgot the vegetables. You took my mind right off food, earlier."

"No, I put them in," he says. "You conked out at some point this afternoon, and I decided to go check on the stew. Good thing I did – I put the other ingredients in then." He laughs again. "How _about_ me? I actually managed to get you off task. That's rare."

"Yeah, yeah. But thanks for checking on the stew."

"You should be thanking me for everything else," he says, giving me another one of those mock-leers and waggling his eyebrows again.

I look at him, considering. "You know, this is the most I think I have ever heard you laugh. It's nice. I love your laugh."

He's still smiling, but more serious now. "I can't remember being this happy." I lean over to kiss him, and he whispers, "I love you," against my lips. I whisper it back. We hold on to each other, and it feels like my heart is stretching to be bigger, just so it can hold all this love.

"There was one thing I wanted to ask you," he says, shyly. I nod, encouraging him. "How many times have you... you know... finished? Because I can't always tell."

"You do get a little distracted," I tell him, pursing up my lips as if I disapprove. But he's serious, so I answer. "Five times." And I can't help the little shiver that goes up my back, thinking about those times, of tidal wave and shudder and clutch. It's only happened with his hands on me, not during the actual..._you_ _know. Sex. _ But I don't think that matters.

"Five? Looks like I owe you one," he says. And then his smile goes crooked, that naughty smile he first gave me last night. "Guess I'd better pay up then," he says.

I put my hand up between us before he can seize me and start doing whatever it is he does that makes my knees all weak. "That would be nice," I say, "but... I'm a little sore."

"And I need a little time too," he says. Kisses me gently. "Sore, huh?"

"It's not bad. Just a _little_ sore." I don't need him worrying about me again.

"Well, that would lead to me still being ahead by one," he says, reasonably. And that smile peeks out again. "No, I had something else in mind." He won't tell me what. He just kisses me, tugs the t-shirt (his, of course) I'm wearing over my head, and starts nuzzling my neck. He caresses my breasts, kisses them... kisses lower on my body... and still lower. I gasp and press my thighs together, but he raises himself on his elbows and looks up at me with that same twinkling naughty smile and says, "Trust me, Katniss."

I remember the nightlock berries in the arena, my gamble that the Gamemakers would rather have two live Victors than no victors at all. My insistent plea to Peeta to _trust me_. So of course I trust him.

I let him put his hands on my thighs, move them apart. I can feel my cheeks turning red as he studies me. Says, "You know, that diagram was remarkably accurate. I know where all the landmarks are now." I laugh a little, but then he blows cool air across that sensitive place, and my hands curl involuntarily into his hair.

Turns out one of the elaborate plans he's been concocting since he was fourteen was to put his mouth on me, and to please me that way. And it works.

So now we're even. For the moment.


	18. Chapter 18: The Light in Your Eyes

**A/N: Shortish Haymitch chapter. He's in a far better mood than he was last time, so the language, while not exactly tea-party suitable, isn't nearly as bad. Warning: includes description of a violent scene from his past.**

**Love and gratitude to Ms. Collins, and I don't claim to own THG.**

Chapter 18: The Light in Your Eyes

_Haymitch_

I haven't seen either of them all day. Haven't seen them since I left the boy's house after dinner last night – but you can damn well be sure I'm going over there _this_ evening.

It promises to be interesting. The sexual tension has been heating up for a couple of weeks, but last night it was at simmer. They couldn't keep their eyes off each other, and it seemed like they kept making excuses to touch each other. Leaning past each other setting the table or pulling plates out. She poured tea with her hand on his shoulder, and as she leaned close to pour, he turned to her like flowers turn to the sun.

It's gonna happen, and soon. Some time this week, I'm guessing.

Unless she gets cold feet. _ She's_ the holdout. Always has been. Private. Cautious with her personal life. Hates to be told what to do, as I learned early on. Him? Clear as water, good as bread. Absolutely steadfast. Lives and breathes by her smiles.

Aaah, I must be getting old and sentimental. Truth is, she hates needing anything, so the thought of loving him and needing him in her life just terrifies her.

How do I know? I just do. I understand her. I even understand that if he pushed the issue, actually made a move on her instead of letting her take the lead, she wouldn't be able to resist him. Would probably beg him shamelessly if he stopped halfway through. It's not that the Pure Katniss act is an act; it isn't. Not in the least. It's that she _means_ her actions, more than anybody else I've ever met, and the idea of a casual fuck is completely alien to her. If she gives in, she'll mean it. She's passionate, the Girl on Fire.

Maybe I'll put a bug in his ear this evening after dinner. He's dying to touch her, it's obvious. Probably had a million wet dreams about her. I don't know how he gets any sleep, sharing a bed with her. But I can't ask that. He'd bristle up and tell me it's not her fault.

And anyway, it's not my business. I'm just here to make sure that the Mockingjay doesn't go completely off the rails and take out somebody else. (Which she wouldn't. I know she knew precisely what she was doing when she killed Coin, and why. She meant it. She'd as good as told me that in that meeting of surviving Victors, that whatever she did would be because of her sister. And she didn't think she'd live through it, either, she intended not to.)

Also anyway, I'm starving. I'm in a good mood, because they usually feed me well, and I'm looking forward to catching all the little sneaky ways they can't keep their hands off each other and honing my prediction on how long it'll be before they wind up in each other's pants. Greasy Sae and I have a bet going: I say within the month, she says Katniss is stubborn and it won't be until fall.

I remember to knock this time, but standing on the front step makes me feel stupid, so I just go in. "Hey! Dinner guest's here!" I shout.

The girl comes out of the kitchen, and just looking at her, I _know_. She's wearing a soft dress (a dress!) patterned with orange leaves, and she looks like she's swallowed a dozen candles. A savory smell follows her out of the kitchen. She's smiling.

I catch my jaw before it can drop very far, and remind myself I knew this was coming. I'm even going to win that bet. "Hey, sweetheart," I say, and hand her a bottle of wine. I felt like sharing it this evening – maybe they'd get tipsy and nature would take its course, I thought. No need for it now. "What's for dinner?"

"Rabbit stew," she says, and actually blushes. I've not said one word to make her blush, so it's either my expression or something she's not going to tell me about. What it's got to do with rabbit stew is anybody's guess. Kind of funny that I brought a bottle of blush wine, though, given her pink cheeks.

I hear the boy's slightly uneven footsteps coming down the stairs, and we both turn to look at him.

If she's glowing like a dozen candles, _he_ looks like he's swallowed the sun. He is incandescent with joy. They lock gazes, unable to look away from each other, and I swear the light in the hall grows brighter.

My throat closes up in the presence of so much happiness.

The next minute I'm in so much pain it feels like a knife to the gut. The way they're looking at each other is exactly the way that my girl looked at me the day I got back from my Games, four days before she died. The way she looked at me when I first kissed her after school, the way she looked at me every time we made love – two desperate teenagers sneaking around in the dark of the Meadow, never getting enough of each other. I can't get my breath, and I want to drink her off my mind.

Instead, I turn and blunder out the front door. I need air. I need a bottle.

I stand there bent over on the boy's front walk with my hands on my knees, and debate going back to my house for white liquor. But the door opens behind me and the girl comes out. I can tell by the footsteps who it is.

She comes up behind me and just to the side, where I can see her out of the corner of my eye but she can't see my face. She puts her hand on my arm. She never touches me unless there's some kind of emotional storm, so I must be a pitiful kind of wreck.

I finally get my breath and sit down on the grass. She sits down with me, and her face is calm but I know she knows me, and I don't behave like that. I make sarcastic remarks, and I needle her and Effie, and I drink. She knows this is serious business for me. And she knows I know her too: she won't go away until I tell her, and she won't boo-hoo over me when I do.

I sigh. I tell her in words of one syllable: my girl, her face when we were together, her glow. _This _girl, now, the Mockingjay – she knows already. I told her, the day that Finnick Odair did his explosive tell-all interview about Snow and the things that "desirable" tributes were forced to do. I'd told Katniss then that my mother and my brother and my girl were all dead two weeks to the day from my return to Twelve after my Games. But I tell her again, and I tell her how my girl was accused of stealing from the butcher and sentenced to forty lashes at the whipping post. How, because she was thin, the whip cut her and cut her and cut her until you could see her ribs, white bone showing through red red muscle. How she fainted at the twenty-third stroke, and how by the thirty-sixth, she was dead. Tied up there to the post, Head Peacekeeper whipping a dead body. How they wouldn't let me near her even afterward, would only release her body to her sobbing mother.

I don't cry. Because _I do not cry_. Ever. Not since the day I knew I was totally alone, that I would be paying for the rest of my life for my actions in the arena. Paying for the way I used the arena for my own purposes, instead of sacrificing myself upon the Capitol's altar.

I finish telling. I need a drink.

Instead of looking at my girl's face in my memory, I look at _her_. At Katniss. I've dimmed her glow a little, but she has never stopped knowing how fragile all our lives are. The boy might forget – or might find joy in spite of it, because he is genuinely good – but never her.

The anger burns still in her veins. The thirst for justice. The determination to keep those she loves safe. And for all that, I see how right now she's itching to take the boy upstairs and let him make her forget the story I've just told her, let him make her blood tingle, let her body trick her with pleasure and the possibility of carrying our human genes into the future, regardless of how cursed we are with stupidity and violence.

I shouldn't be so cynical, not about the two of them. They're mending each other's broken places. There is no hope of that for me. "It was my fault," I say, and my voice is broken, the same way Snow broke me.

"Not your fault," she says firmly. I know why. I've comforted her with the same words. Did she not feel that the destruction of District Twelve was specifically her fault, as punishment for the rebellious act that I orchestrated for her? Yes. She does. We still feel the weight of so many deaths on our consciences. We will probably always feel it. "Snow's fault. His decision to punish you for staying alive."

"I know," I tell her. Because that's as true as the other.

I watch the sky darken to lavender. Over my left shoulder is a gold-and-orange sunset. "Well, I don't guess I need to ask what's going on with you and the boy wonder back there." Her face goes scarlet, and she hides it in her hands. Tries to stifle the giggle that makes her sound about six years old. "It's about time," I tell her. "Can't believe it took you this long. You dummy."

She can't keep the smile off her pink face. "How did you know? Does it show that much?"

"It shows," I tell her. "It's the light in your eyes. Both of you. All lit up like you're on stage."

She looks up at me, smile fading into this tender, vulnerable expression, and her throat works. "He's so_ beautiful_ to me, Haymitch," she confesses. "I look at him and he's just so – he's like sunshine. Like blue skies and clean water and cool air. Like dandelions in the spring. He's everything that's good." Evening is coming on, hiding her face from me. She won't let the tears fall, but they're in her voice. "I tried, I tried so hard, not to love him."

"You can't not," I say, because it's true. I've watched her try not to love him for a very long time.

"I couldn't help it. I love him so much," and her voice breaks, and the tears fall after all. "I love him so much. And I'm so terrified, every minute, because what if I lose him? I can't live without him."

Now she knows what anyone with eyes already knew: that she loved him. Hawthorne or no Hawthorne. Anyone could see how important he was to her. Even during their first Games. If those two had been left alone to figure out what was what, she'd have known sooner.

She is actually sobbing. I put my arm around her. It's awkward, but she needs that. It's so rare for her to show any weakness at all. "Hush, sweetheart. Don't be afraid. You're safe here. There are no Peacekeepers here, no Capitol, no Snow. You're safe, we're safe."

"You don't believe that," she chokes out.

"I have to," I say, and I suddenly realize that it's true. I have choices here. Stop drinking? Probably not. Continue to live in fear that someone will take everything from me again? I won't do it. Believe in a future where families stay together? I have to. Or nothing is worth the pain of living.

We look at each other, Katniss and me. Victor and mentor. Dare I say, daughter and father? I do dare say it, but only to myself. Because there's only so much I can believe. Her sobs stop, and she's looking at me through tears.

"You've been listening to Peeta," she says, sniffling.

The boy does come over and yap at me from time to time. Shows me his art. Gives me hope that if he can make it, after all the shit he's been through, that good will prevail. Even if it's only a little bit. "Yeah, well... I need a drink."

"You do not. You need rabbit stew," she says. Miss Bossy. Back to normal. She stands up, reaching a hand down for me. "You need food."

"Guess I do." We turn around to go back in the house, and the door is standing open. In the uncertain, soft sunset light of outdoors, we have missed the glow coming from inside the house. The boy is standing on the stoop, and the glow in his face is brighter than the light behind him.

"Dinner," he says. We go in. He stops her at the door, and I pretend not to be listening, but I am. "I'm _beautiful?_" he says to her, laughter in his voice.

"You know you are," she says out loud, and kisses him.

I'm going to have to call Effie. Poor Effie, she hates her new job, filing paperwork for one of the travel agencies that have started to spring up in the Capitol, but it's all she could find. She's bored even sillier than usual, the silly wench, and she's taken to calling me every week or so to bitch and moan. They're wasting her skills on filing – she should be planning complicated train schedules.

Old Eff will _kill _me if she finds out that I knew about the kids getting it on and didn't tell her. Worse, she'll stop sending me good whisky.


	19. Chapter 19: Need

**A/N: So what does Peeta think of the new relationship development? Warning: some smut, and from the male POV to boot. Which means, of course, that _he_ doesn't think it's smutty; instead, to him it's the Eighth Wonder of the World. Maybe the First. **

Chapter 19: Need

_Peeta_

I suspect that we're excessive with this new pastime. But for me it's never quite enough. We can do it four times during the day and once before sleep, and I _still_ wake up in the night, crazy with the need to spill myself inside her yet again.

The need is controlling me these days. Every thought, every act. I can barely even keep up with my regular routine lately, I'm so distracted. I skip the afternoon cleanup crew most days, even though they've been clearing the site for the new bakery and prepping for new construction. I'm still baking in the morning, because where else are people going to buy bread? That's up to me. I make too many cheese buns because she likes them so much. Sometimes we eat them in bed. One memorable afternoon, we ate them off each other's bodies on the kitchen table. (I didn't last long that time, but it only made me want her again and again. I couldn't stop, that day. It's a good thing the table's sturdy. And the kitchen chairs.)

I've got this constant buzz, this itch, under my skin all the time – feels like even the breeze from the door, when it's _her_ opening it, raises the hairs on my arms. I started counting up hours the other day, and if I'm not either sleeping or making love with her, I'm _thinking_ about it. Eating breakfast? Hard-on. Showering? Definitely boner. Baking? Big wood and counting the minutes until she gets home. And at the same time, it's not just teenage-guy hormones stuff, not just about the release. It's so emotional. Either easy and light-hearted and fun, or tender as a new dawn, or urgently passionate as flame, it just means so much. She loves me. She _loves_ me. I'm in awe.

When we are together, when we're wrapped around each other and joined in that primal way, I feel whole. Undamaged and healthy and complete and worthy and pretty damn near perfect. I haven't had an episode since she told me she loved me, two weeks ago.

I did nearly have one this week, but she kept me out of it. We started building the new bakery just three days ago. The site's finally cleared. That was a rough day, the day all the debris was gone and I stood there in what used to be the counter area, thinking of all the faces that used to be behind the counter, making bread, and all the faces that used to be on the other side of the counter, buying it, and all the faces that just looked in from the outside wishing they could buy it... Rough day. And the wind picked up a little, and I got a faceful of ashes, and I started wondering for the very first time whether any of these ashes that float around town might be the remains of my family.

Very very rough day. I was starting to hear screams in the back of my head, see flames flickering just at the edges of my vision. But I picked up a nail and pressed it against my palm – not enough to puncture, just enough to hurt, and that helped me focus. I choked back my panic and thanked the guy from Six that's doing the blueprints and heading the construction teams in town, and I walked home as fast as I could. Katniss was there napping in our bed, all warm and naked from our post-lunch romp, and she opened her arms to me and took me _home_, to that secret magic place that has no location in the physical world. And all my pain went away, all of it.

I was trying to explain all of this to Dr. Aurelius on the phone yesterday, and I guess I was pretty inarticulate, just couldn't get across that loving her is healing me, _she_ is healing me, and that I have never felt better in my entire life. That I am finally getting the life that I deserve.

He seemed, if not actually skeptical, sort of worried about it. He kept going on about _caution_ this and _We'll-see_ that, and _using-sex-to-sublimate-emotional-turmoil _the other, and he doesn't understand that this is what I've always wanted, always. That I've always loved her, and touching her is like being over the moon. It's puzzling.

He reminded me that I'm supposed to be keeping a schedule. Asked if we're still working on the Memory Book, and I said "Sometimes." Which isn't true, I haven't looked at it for days. I think Katniss has written in it some, but I don't really want to put my effort into adding images to the book right now.

If I paint, I can only paint her, and these works are so erotic that even painting the damn things causes all the blood to leave my brain. At times I've had to go outside and lie down on the grass, let the heat and sunshine knock me out, just to get a little mental peace.

I've worked mostly in watercolors in the past, sometimes in acrylics. Oils are both expensive and difficult, but nothing else has their depth, so I've done these two canvases in oils. It's not an easy medium for me, but I persevere with it, and after five days the canvas I call _Katniss Sleeping_ is starting to look the way I'd imagined it.

In the canvas, you see our bed, and her in it, lying on her side with one hand beneath her head on the pillow. The scene is shadowy, lit only by moonlight, and the most truly beautiful thing about it is the curve of her naked hip glimmering like the curve of the moon rising over the crest of a hill. No, maybe the most beautiful part of it is her face so full of trust, so relaxed, her lips parted, one arm stretched across the bed toward the viewer.

She'd looked like that one night, reaching out to me in her sleep as I returned to bed after a bathroom break. Asleep, and missing me... I'd looked a long minute, and realized that I would have to paint her. Grabbed my sketchbook from the dresser and drew her with pencil by the light of that moon, scribbling thoughts on the edge of the page:_ Moonlight_. _ Hip like moon. Arm reaching. Longing. Trust._

It can't express everything I feel when I look at her body in the shadow of mine – the miracle of her mouth, the cradle of her hipbones, the light in her eyes – but I hope she'll see my love for her in it. I haven't let her see it yet. The need to work on it is almost as consuming as my need to touch her. The difficulties? The quality of light. The expression of trust on her face. The depiction of her lithe body in shadow, which by the way makes me want her every time I look at it.

The other canvas is no less technically difficult, but in a different way. It's full of color and light, and the difficulties are the texture of fabric, the way it curves over a body, the way sunlight catches the dust motes, the expression on her face. This picture is even more erotic, despite the fact that she's wearing clothes in it.

Well, not clothes exactly. In _Katniss, Mine_, she's wearing an old white shirt of mine, too big for her and open down the middle where she hasn't buttoned it. It's morning, and the sun is pouring through the window, lighting up her body. You see the light gleaming off the curve of one small breast there where the shirt hangs open, the delicacy of her navel, the graceful line of her calves, the hint of her nipples under the shirt, the shadowy valley between her legs. She glows like a ripe peach under the thin material, standing by an easel that holds another of my paintings, and her smile is that ageless, sensual smile of a woman who knows her appeal. It's a smile I've never seen her show to anyone but me.

In real life, I'd wanted to show her a painting I'd done a few weeks ago, before all this happened between us. It's of a sunrise over the mountains, of the way that everything goes red-pink-gold behind the dark trees, and I'd practically dragged her out of bed and down the hall to the painting room to see it. It was chilly, and she'd grabbed my shirt on the way out of our bedroom and put it on. Forgot to button it once she was looking at the sunrise painting, smiling with joy at it and at me, and the sun came through the window and lit her up, the lines of her body glowing under the white cotton.

The whole thing was such sensual delight – her hair all tousled, her eyes heavy with sleep, her little bronzy-pink nipples shining through the shirt – that my mouth instantly went dry and my groin heavy. She'd looked at my face and given me a pleased, knowing smile. "Come on, then," she'd whispered to me, her eyes enticing, and I'd taken her hard, no preliminaries, there on the bare wood floor, our mouths and hips locked together. She'd left the shirt on, seeing how much it excited me.

The thought of her like that still excites me: fresh from our bed, willing, wearing my shirt over her nakedness. The shirt, I think, probably has an impact because it stamps _Mine_ all over her. Clearly I have issues with this idea of possession. I mean, Katniss belongs first to herself and only secondarily to me. I don't own her and I'd never try to, but she belongs to no other man. She'll allow no one else to possess her, and that utterly thrills me. Like I say, I have issues.

Speaking of which, Gale's been interviewed on TV news four or five times recently. Apparently he's some kind of director of military strategy, second in command to the Minister of Defense. I haven't figured out exactly what his title is. I haven't even figured out whether he's straight military or military-political liaison. Every time that too-damn-handsome face has shown up on the screen, Katniss has completely withdrawn, during the broadcast and for at least several hours after: she'll scoot away from me, draw her legs up onto the couch, hug her knees with her arms, hide the lower half of her face in them. And she has nightmares those nights, sometimes crying out Prim's name. Sometimes it's _his_ name she calls out, though, and though I hug her, stroke her hair, tell her everything's okay, I can't bring myself to comfort her with anything more intimate on nights she's had another man's name on her lips, and she doesn't ask for it then.

This slices my heart to ribbons.

But if she withdraws sometimes, she always comes back. I let her show me when she's ready for my touch again, though it nearly kills me to not reach for her first the way I've become accustomed to doing. She doesn't take long, even after those icy Gale nights. By the next afternoon, she's pulling my head down to kiss her, slipping her hand into my pants, saying my name, moving my hands to her breasts, saying my name again, asking me to make love to her. I take every bit of it with gratitude. I do my best to please her.

It seems she comes easiest atop me, though I have to grit my teeth and do complicated mental math (I multiply the cheese buns recipe by nine, or try to compute how many bags of flour I'll use in the coming week) to keep from losing it too fast while watching her. Watching her breasts move, seeing her head tip back in ecstasy. Watching her thighs tense on either side of my hips. Watching that point of our joining, the slide and friction, the slickness and heat. _No: I'll do fourteen recipes of whole wheat bread, that'll take... _Complicated math. That's the only thing that keeps me from flying apart.

One night, curled around each other in bed after lovemaking, I asked her what she liked best, which position she favored, just to see if I could guess right.

She surprised me. She said, "I like everything so far. I like it when I'm on top because I can control that. I like you on top because you make me feel so... I don't know... feminine."

And then she blew my mind. Confessed, her fingers drawing delicate little designs on my chest, "But I think I love it best when I sit on your lap in a chair. It's so intimate, the way we look into each other's eyes. The way you kiss my face. And it always makes you cry."

It does. I've always felt a little ashamed of that – the inability to control my display of emotions. (_She_ can always do it. You go look at the footage of that first Reaping Day, for example: I know how completely wrecked she was, but on camera she seems almost bored. _My_ tears, however, are evident. I look about six years old rather than sixteen. Makes me sick.)

Oh, but the tender way she holds my face in her hands when we're together like that... I can't help it, everything just spills over.

I love her, I love her, I love her. I'm so happy.


	20. Chapter 20: Sublimation, Lovesong

**A/N: This one's for anyone old enough to have seen The Cure in concert... I know there are _some _of us here... anyway, I was listening to what must have been their biggest hit – Lovesong – and thinking first, that it's a very very simple set of lyrics made memorable by the music, and second, that I knew whose lyrics they are. (BTW, all the lyrics on the "Disintegration" album are written out in this e.e. cummings style, no punctuation and no caps, so that wasn't my idea.)**

**I make no claim to own any of THG.**

Chapter 20: Sublimation/Lovesong

_Peeta_

_whenever i'm alone with you you make me feel like i am home again whenever i'm alone with you you make me feel like i am whole again_

The foundation of the new bakery was poured a few days ago, and the outer cinderblock framework is up. I'm thrilled. We're pretty much using the same piece of ground as the old bakery, since nobody's disputing that it belongs to me. But I've talked to Finch, the architect-engineer from Six who's heading up the construction, and not only is the building going to be about eight feet larger in depth, we're also going to make some structural changes to the new building. There will still be two commercial ovens in the back bakery room and a big counter in the front room, but the configuration will be somewhat different. I hope it will be more efficient and work-friendly, which could not have been said of the old facility. There will still be living quarters upstairs too, but the entire building will be taller, with higher ceilings that should help with airflow. I don't plan to be living in these upstairs rooms, but I'm also hoping to hire some help, since there's only one of me; the living space should help in attracting applicants.

At odd intervals of the morning, I keep seeing my family out of the corners of my eyes: Ryen standing on the long stoop that ran the length of the front, arm around some girl or other. Banner winking at me over the big mixing vat. Mother stacking loaves into the display window, lips pinched at the thought of all she had yet to do before making dinner. My father stoking the fires in the big ovens in the morning, eyes tired but smiling at me as he motions for an armful of kindling.

It's almost overwhelming. That's twice now that I've missed something Finch said and had to ask him to repeat it. I'm getting distracted. It's getting late in the morning, too. The construction team has brought their lunches and have started to sit down in whatever shade they can find. There is no apple tree in the back yard anymore. There are of course no pigs.

My skin's started that rolling itch I get when I've been too long without Katniss. I need her. I need to go home for lunch and loving, not necessarily in that order. But Finch keeps talking, asking about this improvement and that, and whether I can afford it (I can). And I keep fidgeting, and I keep seeing my mother's hand appear out of thin air, coming toward my face, and I keep flinching back.

Finally Finch appears to notice my complete inability to pay attention to what he's saying, so he lets the blueprints roll up, and tells me that he's got enough to go on with the planning over the next couple of days, and why don't I knock off for the day?

So I knock off for the day. Get home as fast as I can, come through the door, look for her and find her in the shower upstairs. Strip my clothes off, join her in the shower, kiss her mouth and all her sensitive spots. Enter her there, both of us kneeling on the floor of the bathroom, and reach my hand around to stroke her until she cries out, until I can feel her in spasm around me. Then I let myself find release.

_Then_ I can breathe freely, at home. Home is here in the house we share. Home is that precious warm cleft between her thighs and the weight of her in my embrace, home is the way I feel when I call out her name and let go inside her.

Home is in her eyes.

_whenever i'm alone with you you make me feel like i am young again whenever i'm alone with you you make me feel like i am fun again_

She's been working on the Memory Book again. Writing about her father, I think, because she's been singing little snatches of songs – a bar or two as she puts on her boots, a whole verse as she cuts up potatoes and turnips for dinner. She sings "Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair," changing the words to fit me, as she washes sheets.

We wash sheets a lot at our house, because she likes them fresh and taut and unwrinkled on the bed, but they don't stay that way long with the way we love each other every night. Laundry is one of the few household things she won't let me do. I don't know why. And I don't know why it bugs me that she won't, because there are any number of things Katniss is stubborn about.

Her mother, for example. Her mother keeps calling, and Katniss doesn't answer the phone. She goes to her house for her Wednesday-afternoon scheduled phone call with Dr. Aurelius. (Which I am _dying_ to listen in on, but which I know I can't – because it's not honorable, because it probably would upset or embarrass me, and because if she found out, I would be drawn, quartered, boiled in oil, poisoned, electrocuted, hung, shot, stabbed, and _then _she'd go to work on me.)

(Kidding. Mostly.)

Anyway, she'll talk to Dr. Aurelius on Wednesdays, but she never, never, answers her phone at any other time. Won't answer mine, either. I answer my phone, and I have strict instructions to instruct any callers who ask for her that she's not here. Yes, even her mother. And I don't even want to go into that, but she hasn't talked to her mother on the telephone since shortly after I arrived in Twelve. They write, sometimes. I think. She reads all her mail when she goes to her house for her phone sessions with Dr. Aurelius, and only then.

I think she'd probably relax that rule for Johanna. She misses Johanna. Talks about her a lot. I miss Johanna dreadfully myself. (And I notice that Johanna never answers her phone in Seven either. It rings and rings and rings, and no one answers it. Where is she? Is she okay? I don't even know who to ask.)

The news of Annie's pregnancy hit Katniss hard. She and Finnick got pretty close, it sounded like, when they were rushing around doing propos in Thirteen. During the time the Capitol had me and Annie and Johanna. And I'd be jealous of Finnick, except that he was so obviously in love with Annie. And, of course, except that he's dead.

I think of Annie, alone with a baby, not quite in the world and not quite out of it, and my heart seizes up. Could I make a life without Katniss, but with our child? I just can't imagine that burden. Katniss' mother had to do that. Gale's mother did, too, for that matter.

But the Memory Book – she hasn't asked me to paint her father. I don't know if that's because she has a photo of him, or because I didn't know her father and couldn't get his face right, or if it's still too personal to share him with anybody else. I think I'm faintly offended. Just faintly.

_however far away i will always love you however long i stay i will always love you whatever words i say i will always love you i will always love you_

This evening, Mrs. Everdeen calls from District Four with the news that Annie's given birth to a little boy. She calls my house, and exchanges some how-are-you chit-chat with me before telling me about little Finn (eight pounds two ounces, twenty-one inches long, healthy as a horse and already showing signs of having his father's hair). Annie's still there in the hospital because it was a difficult birth, and they've got her on some heavy-duty medication so she's not up to talking on the phone at the moment. She asks me to please pass the message on to Katniss. There's something in her voice that tells me she knows her daughter is standing right behind me.

I say I will. I say, "Why don't you come for a short visit sometime soon? I know Katniss would love to see you."

Katniss' hands tighten painfully on my shoulders, and Mrs. Everdeen sounds sad when she says, "Oh, I couldn't. I'm staying with Annie for a month or two now that the baby's born. She really needs me."

I let that clunker of a statement just fall dead into the conversation. _What a horrible_ _thing to say_, I think. Horrible and selfish – because her own daughter needed her presence just as much some months ago, and she couldn't manage to even be in the same district, never mind the same house. I take a deep breath and push down my anger on Katniss' behalf, and say, "Well, perhaps some time in the fall."

"Perhaps," she sighs.

"And please give Annie all our love." I think for a minute, and add, "Is there anything else we could send? Baby blankets, diapers, clothes? I don't know what things a baby needs." It's not until I've said it that I can hear the wistful ache in my voice. Katniss' hands leave my shoulders, and she leaves the study. Her bare feet thud on the boards of the hall, and I know if I can hear her footsteps, she's angry. I sigh.

"Oh, no, there's nothing she really needs right now. Plutarch sent her a lovely bassinet, and she has clothes and diapers. Babies don't need much if they have love, you know." And somehow this statement hurts more than anything else she's said this evening.

I need Katniss.

But Mrs. Everdeen goes on to say that the baby could use a toy when he's older, a soft doll perhaps. "Perhaps we'll find one," I say neutrally. "Please ask Annie to call when she's feeling up to it."

She agrees to ask Annie, and we say farewell, and I hang up. My chest aches.

I need Katniss in my arms. I go to find her, and she's standing in the living room with her hands on her hips, glaring at the floor. "Hey," I say, and move to hold her. She moves away, turning her body at right angles to me. "What did I do wrong?" I ask, feeling like that little boy who could never make his mother happy.

She bites her lip. Heaves this enormous sigh.

"Katniss, please tell me," I say. This is not like her. It's frustrating.

She suddenly rounds on me and says, accusing me, "_You _want a baby."

Oh. "Well, someday," I answer cautiously. "Someday. Not now." Not now, when we're both still fighting our own issues too hard to be responsible parents. Not now, when we still keep the kitchen knives locked up unless I'm cooking. Not now, when we're still losing ourselves in each other's bodies six times a day with little time for anything else. Not now, when in a few weeks the country is preparing for a Hunger Games with Capitol children as tributes, which just makes me _sick_.

I have not even brought up the issue of a baby, not since the first time we made love and she told me not to worry about condoms. I have not asked at all. We have not used any preventative measures in the least.

And, _okay_, maybe I have made some incorrect assumptions from that fact. Maybe so. But she likes children. And she loves me. And I suppose I assume that she would like to have several combinations of the two of us to sing lullabyes to, especially now that conditions are so much better here: most people in the district are eating well, we have a doctor to tend illnesses and accidents, there are no more mines, and the country seems somewhat stable. Now that there's hope for a good life.

"No," she says, and her hands are fisted and her eyes full of tears. "Never. _Never_." She takes a deep breath, and I can tell she's trying to calm down. "I never wanted kids, _never_."

This hits me hard. I'd thought it was dependent on the conditions under which she'd have to bear and bring up children, and if those were good... well, she'd be a good mother. Fierce as a bear.

"But – " I clamp my lips closed over my protests, because she's upset now and reasoning will not help, will have to wait for another day when she's willing to listen.

"_No_," she says urgently, and her hand swings toward me, and I flinch back out of habit, but she only intends to grip my shoulder. "I mean it," she insists, her fingers digging in, and I can see she does mean it, and my heart aches so badly I can't stand it.

"Katniss," I plead, because everything hurts, and I need her so desperately. "Please hold me, I need you. I only want _you_." And in this moment it is the whole truth. I only want her, and everything else will follow or be burned away.

She lets me come into her arms and hold her close. We kiss, and like always the heat of it flares into fire, and we step into it and are not scorched. We burn together and are not consumed. And all my pain is burnt away from me, twisting up into curls of smoke as it ceases to exist.

_whenever i'm alone with you you make me feel like i am free again whenever i'm alone with you you make me feel like i am clean again_

Later, in bed, I ask her why we're not using birth control. Although I do not _say_, "Since you don't want my baby," she seems to hear it.

"It's not you," she says, stroking my arm. "It's not you at all. It's me. I can't _stand_ – " she chokes off and takes a deep breath – "It's not safe. For kids. You can't protect them. You can't keep them safe."

"Life is much safer now," I hazard. "We have plenty to eat. No Games. And they've already broken ground for the new lab facility, so that people have a place to work." Making medications, much better than digging up coal underground. No possibility of job-related fatalities. "Our kids would be safe."

She won't look at me, even when I try to put my hand under her chin. Instead, she puts her head on my chest and snuggles down. I stop trying. I'm pretty good at coaxing her, but I know that if it's not working, it's not _gonna_ work until her mood changes.

But now my mood's changed too. I feel lonely and frustrated, and this whole evening's _thing_ about a woman not wanting children, or refusing to make a place in her life for them, is starting to make me feel just awful. And I'm so tired. And there are those flickering shapes like flames at the edge of my vision again.

I still don't know why we're not using birth control. I feel unsettled. "Katniss, you need to tell me. If you don't want children, why aren't we preventing them?"

I'm trying to sound firm, but I guess I don't. She sits up quick and slews around to look at me. Which just makes me feel worse, because she won't always let me see her being vulnerable but she sure as hell feels entitled to look at _me_ being vulnerable. "Are you upset?" she demands.

This is dangerous ground. I step back. "No, I'm fine. I just need to know why we're being irresponsible."

"I'm careful," she says, staring earnestly into my face. "I went to see Dr. Lida for the medicine." She explains the implant in her upper arm, picks up my hand and runs it over the little ridge there. My eyes get wide. I have touched every part of her body I could possibly get my hands on, all of it, and I had not noticed this. I had been so focused on other things (her breasts, the softness of her skin, the roundness of her thigh) that it didn't even register. I feel unaccountably guilty at my failure to notice.

"Wait a minute. When was this?" I interrupt her as she's explaining how long it lasts.

"Oh... couple of weeks ago," she says. "Maybe three. Whenever it was that I cut your hair last." That long ago. And she didn't tell me. I'm nonplussed. "You're frowning," she says. "What?"

"You just – decided? Ahead of time. That you were going to sleep with me." I can't wrap my head around this.

"I wanted to be ready," she says. "For when I would be, you know, _ready_. Emotionally."

Well, it makes sense. And Katniss is always about being prepared, taking care of necessities. But at the same time, it seems a little, I don't know, callous to me. "Okay," I say, and I sigh.

She squints at me. "You're upset."

"I'm not. It's okay. I'm just tired." I really am. I am exhausted, and I don't know why. It's not like I've had an unusually active sort of day. She reaches her hand up toward me, and I flinch again, automatically. (Where is _that_ coming from?) But she's only stroking my hair off my forehead, and it feels nice, and I let her. She does love me. She does.

We sink down in the bed together and make love again, all tender and sweet, and it's only at the end that I become really desperate, sliding my hands under her hips and lifting her toward me so that I have an unimpeded angle, and there for a few moments I am reduced to animal level, all thrust and grunt and bared teeth. It's only when I finally collapse on top of her that my words come back. "_Say it,_" I beg her. "Please."

"I love you, Peeta," she tells me – like she means it, not out of duty, and she cups my cheek in her palm.

_however far away i will always love you however long i stay i will always love you whatever words i say i will always love you i will always love you_

**A/N: Watch Lovesong by The Cure here at Youtube: watch?v=dcDvffbF6fI**

**Yes. Yes, I _am_ old, thankyousomuchforasking. **

**OH. And I am probably going to move these writings to a private blog soon, just in case goes all new-broom-sweeps-clean on smut. Because, to be honest, I don't think that this story makes any sense emotionally without the sex.**

**The address will be on my profile – to access it, I'll ask potential readers to send me an email stating that they are 18, so I can add them to the "allowed" list. (Please actually, um, BE 18. If you're not 18, what are you doing reading this anyway?) **


	21. Chapter 21: Hard Hat

**A/N: More smut. And more emotional stuff. And yes, go ahead and worry about Peeta some, but he's got Katniss and Dr. Lida and Haymitch and Dr. Aurelius to keep him on the rails, so don't worry _too _much.**

Chapter 21: Hard Hat

_Katniss_

It helps.

It relaxes Peeta. Quite a bit, really. I still haven't pinpointed all his triggers, but over the last few months I've begun to notice: any little fear primes him for bigger ones.

For example, if he's expecting me back from hunting at a certain time and I'm delayed or he just doesn't know where I am. If there's a thunderstorm or I drop something with a loud bang. If I wake him up by leaning over him. Apparently that's something he hated and feared when he was in that Capitol cell, and went on hating and fearing when he was in the hospital in Thirteen. When people would lean over his face and talk at him, and unpleasant things were probably going to follow. I've figured out that if I don't want him to panic into a hallucination, I have to wake him from the position of lying next to him. (I have to wonder, sometimes, if the way Finnick and I woke him once, during the Quell, wearing that gray-green medicine on our faces, plays some part in that fear.)

There are other triggers as well as sudden loud noises and uncertainty: Fire. Blood. Flying insects. Getting something in his eye. Sometimes the sight of a sharp blade, whether it's the ax and saw that Thom cuts our firewood with, or the big butcher knife I cut up game with, or even one of his own kitchen knives, can make him shudder intermittently for _hours_. I hate fire myself, and I can see him steel himself every time he opens the stove to stoke it.

The time he got a bit of sawdust in his eye two months ago, walking too near a construction crew cutting boards for the health clinic, I actually thought he'd tear his throat out, crying and choking and begging me to please, _please_ let him close his eyes. I'm not entirely sure about what caused that reaction. Unless maybe they made him watch videos and they did something to keep his eyes open so he couldn't escape by closing them? He won't say.

And if he's already upset about something else, the triggers are just that much worse.

But the loving distracts him, keeps his adrenaline level steady, keeps his mind occupied with good things. Whatever they call that calming chemical in the brain, the stuff we're doing together must keep its level high. And maybe the pain dampeners too. (See, Dr. Aurelius? I wasn't completely tuned out. Serotonin. Endorphins. That stuff.)

And he can't go long without it, either. Some days my back hits the bed, or the couch, or the floor, three or four times, and that doesn't even include the nights. I've taken to cleaning game outside, before I come in, because when I've been hunting or walking the trapline, I've been gone three hours minimum and he just _can't stand_ not touching me the second I walk in the door. Cleaning game outside is important not just because of his need to hold me. It cuts down on the possibility of Peeta's seeing blood and knives, as well.

That's the routine now. I wake early, extricate myself if I can from his arms, which I can't always do without waking him too. Some days I mean to get up and hunt but his need is so pressing, I roll back over and we do it again, lips and hands and bodies rocking together, and usually when it's that fast and that early he finishes but I don't. Which is fine, because I don't have to finish every time. It's enough to just have him that intimately close. (Except I notice on days when this happens, I hardly ever get within shooting range of anything.)

So I get up and eat a quick breakfast, and I hunt or walk the trapline before coming home and cleaning any game I have. I could stay out longer, dawdle in the Meadow or up at the meeting rock, or go all the way to the lake, but I admit that most days I'm ready to come back. I miss him too.

Then it's home, clean the game, and spend maybe an hour or so doing things that make me moan, make my toes curl, make me say things I never ever dreamed I'd say out loud. Then lunch. Then sometimes I work on the book or wash clothes or go to the trading center (which I still call the Hob in my mind) and Peeta naps, or Peeta paints and I nap. Then we might do it again, with variations, if there's time before making dinner.

Sometimes Haymitch comes over for it and baits me about how excessive we are with each other. I'd say he baits _us_, except that Peeta is completely unembarrassable. You literally cannot make him blush, not these days. I can spend the meal bright red in the face, hiding in my hands, trying to ignore the crude remarks about the mating habits of rabbits or whether the kitchen table is a more suitable venue for sex or eating. (I do wonder whether Haymitch has actually caught us at it on the table, and we were oblivious.) But Peeta? Just smiles and shakes his head, and warns Haymitch in a cheery voice not to go to far with me, he's seen me throw a knife. I'd say he was smug, but he's too obviously, glowingly happy. And Haymitch? If I had to guess, I'd say that he's proud of us. Or happy for us. Or both. Teasing me is just his mannerless way.

If I'm honest, which I would never be with Haymitch in the room, I have to say that I _love_ making love with Peeta. It just feels so_ good_. And while we're touching each other, my brain can't go places that hurt me, so it's a useful distraction. Also, despite the time we spend naked, we actually have time to get some constructive things done because we're not losing whole days to fugue states or depression or rages.

And I can feel it making a sort of soft little nest in my heart, too, the kind of place I used to live in back before my father was killed and my mother's mind went away and the three of us Everdeen girls began to starve, before I knew how bad the world could be. It's a soft pillow of trust inside me, and everywhere I look in this little soft place, I see Peeta's face there. It looks like him, it smells like him, it feels like the safety and sureness of his arms around me.

Because it does thrill me. It is amazing, the way he fits in me. The way he feels like part of me. The way it sometimes overwhelms me with so much joy. The light in his eyes. The way that the darkness in the rest of my life just makes the goodness of him shine out like stars.

In other news: the new bakery is going up very quickly, and while that's exciting for Peeta, I think it's bringing back so many memories of his family that he's been emotional. He won't tell me about these things – he rarely does – but I think he's been fighting off the occasional flashback. He's been... it's hard to describe... needy lately, can hardly take a break between bouts of lovemaking. Honestly, I'm starting to worry about him. He's still happy, but it's almost as if he _has _to be happy for me no matter what he's feeling.

Annie had her baby. Her and Finnick's baby. A little boy. I feel odd about it. There's something quite beautiful about the fact that Finnick left behind such a wonderful part of himself, something that Annie will need to be really engaged with reality to take care of... a precious reminder. And at the same time, I am still enraged and grieving that Finnick isn't here to see the baby, to help Annie do what she'll have to do to take care of him. Finnick should be here. Finnick _should be here_. I try not to dwell too long on Finnick's not being here. It's hard.

And my mother is staying with Annie in Four. She told Peeta on the phone the other day, and I could barely stay to listen to this conversation, because my mother is taking care of someone who is not me, and because it was very apparent to me from the emotion in his voice that he's not given up on our having children.

I have to wonder, if he wants them so much, will I ever be enough? Is it wrong and selfish for me to hang on to him if he wants to be a father and I never ever want to be a mother, vulnerable to the most wrenching loss I can imagine? I am terrified enough of losing Peeta, who is at least an adult and in relatively good health and, I am grateful, not going down in a mine every day. But a _baby_, a tiny helpless human dependent on me for care... if I screwed up, if I lapsed in my attention for half a second... or worse, if despite my constant vigilance something happened to my child... I don't think I would ever, ever recover. The risk of grief is just too high.

I should cut him loose so he could go find some normal woman, somewhere else, someone who'd bear him a dozen children and treat him the way he deserves. But I love him too much to do it. I'm too selfish. I can't lose him, I think I'd die.

Especially now that we share our bodies with each other. Especially now that I cannot _imagine_ doing this with anyone else, ever.

Yesterday was odd. Every time he touched me it was almost as if he were pushing away some worry. It wasn't his usual unfettered, almost astonished, delight, it was something... darker. Needier. This is something I have not seen in Peeta before, even in his troubled post-hijacking days in Thirteen. He was angry and confused then, certainly, and to be sure, he was angry with _me_. But yesterday, there was a sort of desperation in the way he touched me. I don't understand it at all.

Dr. Aurelius has not been exactly a fount of wisdom about it, either. I mean, I wasn't going to tell him about what went on between Peeta and me, because I don't think the details are any of his business, but it seems that Peeta was too happy about it to keep the news to himself, so Dr. Aurelius already knew.

I went over to my house this morning, coming back from hunting (four pheasants I am very much looking forward to eating at dinner), to see if I could talk to him about the issue, even if it's not my usual day. He only had a few minutes between appointments, so I could only give him the briefest rundown of my uneasy feelings. He came right out and said that he was concerned and has been so since Peeta told him about it. Which worries me, because Dr. Aurelius has this sort of attitude leaning toward benign neglect, rather than the talky-talky head doctors I've run into elsewhere.

Anyway, Dr. Aurelius is worried that instead of "processing his negative feelings," (ugh, who'd be a head doctor and use such words?) Peeta might be shoving them under the rug and distracting himself with the delight of our new hobby. I promise to keep an eye on his mood.

It's only after I hang up that I realize that Dr. Aurelius is probably using the situation as part of my therapy too. I grit my teeth. _Capitol doctors_.

Are Peeta and I doing therapy for each other? And if we are, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Would he even be here if I were well enough to be anywhere else?

All this stuff is so worrying that I can feel myself being edgy and jumpy and irritable. I snapped at Greasy Sae yesterday morning because the eggs were runny, which is ridiculous, and I snapped at Haymitch all through dinner last night for no good reason. I mean, _yes,_ that crack about his being scarred for life by catching us going at it on the couch that time he walked in without knocking is definitely getting old now, but still, it didn't warrant my threatening to take his head off.

I stop by Haymitch's to apologize, but he's already asleep on his living room floor, a mostly-empty bottle beside him, snoring. I move it so he doesn't knock it over in his sleep and put one of the throw pillows under his head before I leave him a note: _Hey. Sorry I was mad. Come over for dinner, okay? K_.

I'm home a little early, so I go ahead and pluck the pheasants before eviscerating them and preparing them for roasting. Even from the outside I can tell that Peeta isn't home, and I'm unreasonably annoyed. I was looking forward to his kisses.

I start to wonder if I'm getting sick – my stomach hurts down low, and I feel achy. Can stress make you sick?

I put the birds in the icebox to keep cool, wash my hands, and grab some water from the tap because I'm really thirsty. I change into a soft top and denim skirt – things that were my mother's – to walk to town. Maybe I'll go check in with Dr. Lida, just to make sure I'm okay. If her waiting room is full, I won't stop, but if she isn't busy, I'll see what she says. I've been sick before, it probably won't kill me.

But from the direction of the Village, you come to the bakery before you get to the clinic, and it looks like the construction guys are busy in the front room, so I go around to the back to see what's going on there. I poke my head in the back door, and Peeta's talking with that architect guy whose name I can never remember, looking at diagrams. They're wearing hard hats and leaning on the smooth-topped counter that's meant for kneading.

I take just a minute to admire Peeta from behind, and then I say, "Hey there."

He turns around fast, and when he sees me he smiles wide. "Hey yourself. Come in! Come see." The architect guy – Finch, that's his name – finds me a hard hat too, and I can tell that from the way Peeta's eyeing me up and down with a tiny smirk at the corner of his mouth, that I must look pretty funny in this hard-hat-and-skirt combo.

I scowl and mouth, "What?" at him, and he doesn't answer, but the corner of his mouth crooks up a little more and he gives me another slow up-and-down look that suddenly makes my heart pound.

Then we're back to business. They show me the blueprints, and I don't really understand them, but I let them tell me how great they are and exactly why, and I just concentrate on how happy Peeta is right now and how warm he is at my side, and I think about how soon I can detach him from the building site and get him somewhere private. He puts his arm around my waist, and somehow his hand nudges itself between the waistband of my skirt and the hem of my top, and he begins to caress my bare side very delicately with his fingertips. I nod my head a lot and smile, and all the while my panties feel increasingly damper.

One of the construction guys comes in and says, "Hey, boss. We're wondering about lunch."

"Oh, sure," Finch says. "Go ahead and start your hour, guys." He turns to Peeta and says, "Well, you want to come back and help some this afternoon?" To me he says, "We're putting in the interior joists and walls in the front room. Ought to finish that up before dinner."

"Yeah, I'll come help later," Peeta says, but now his arm's around my waist and pulling me closer. Finch grabs a lunch pail from the counter and waves as he goes outside to eat.

Quick as a flash, Peeta's seizing me and kissing me, all passionate and sweet, and I kiss back with the same fervor. "Wanna see the upstairs?" he asks, cocking an eyebrow at the wood-framed staircase. "You'll have to keep your hat on," he adds, and I catch my breath.

"Show me, then," I say, in a voice that isn't quite my usual one. For answer, he takes my hand and pulls me carefully up the steps, which have only a rudimentary railing, to the upstairs apartment. It isn't framed up yet, but I can see it's going to be nice from the markings on floors and exterior walls, with big rooms and a nice view.

Peeta pulls me away from the window openings and over to the one solid wall. "You are driving me_ crazy_ in that hat," he growls in my ear before kissing my neck in that good spot under my earlobe.

"Oh, good," I say. "Because you're driving me crazy too." Things seem back to normal for us, no weird _worried-sex_ like yesterday, and I take a deep breath in relief as I reach for his belt.

He lifts my shirt, unhooks my bra, and caresses my breasts, and they're aching and sensitive. I'm so ready for this my legs are shaking. I reach into his pants, and he's as desperately ready as I am. But where? The floor, I suppose. I'm hoping it doesn't have splinters as I go down on my knees, but he says, "Wait," in the low, rough voice he has when he's aroused. He gets down to lie on his back on the floor – which, with his leg, is a little awkward – and pulls his trousers and boxers down. His hat falls off, but he doesn't seem to notice. "There. Now you don't have to be on the floor."

Ever the gentleman. I pull my panties off and toss them aside, then take his hand and put it on me. "You're so wet," he whispers, eyes widening.

"I want you so much," I tell him, and then straddle him and take him inside me. I rock back and forth on him, trying not to make noises loud enough to be heard outside the building, but he reaches two fingers down to my most sensitive spot, and I know already that I'm going to come really hard, really soon. I lean forward and stifle my moans of excitement in his shoulder.

"I love you," he whispers, panting, and I whisper it back, and then I do finish, biting the collar of his shirt to keep from making noise. It isn't long before he climaxes too, pressing my hips to his, grimacing at the effort to be quiet. We stay there on the floor and just breathe for a few moments, sharing soft open kisses.

And then I get up, gathering my skirt out of the way, and he freezes. "Katniss! You're _bleeding!_"

Did I scratch my knees on the rough floor? I look down. "Where?"

"From – from where you bled the first time." He sits halfway up and points at his own groin. "See?"

I see it more easily on his fair skin than on my own thighs, a reddish-brown stain the color of old blood. "I don't feel anything wrong," I say, puzzled, but he leaps up and gets dressed like lightning.

He takes off my hard hat, spins me around and does up the back of my bra, then grabs my elbow. "We're going to see Dr. Lida. _ Now._"

I start to say that perhaps it's just my long-overdue period, but he's already shoved my underwear into his pocket and started to propel me down the stairs, carefully but at speed.

"I don't know that we need to bother her with this," I say as we're going out the front doorframe (there's no door yet). "I don't think it's anything to worry about. It might just be – "

But he won't listen, is hustling me down the street and across it to the clinic. I'm grateful to see that no one is in the waiting room when we get there; the "please sign in, the doctor is with a patient" notice is on the desk. "Please give me my panties," I say to him, holding out my hand. I wonder vaguely if the construction team will notice that we left our hard hats on the second floor.

And then I get a good look at his face. He looks both afraid and guilty. He's fighting off an episode: his pupils are changing size, and his hands are twitchy. I push him into a chair and take his hands. Rest my forehead on his. "It's okay," I assure him. "I'm okay. _You_ are okay. Nothing bad is happening. Anything bad you see is _not real_. We are okay."

I kiss his mouth, then pull back and look into his eyes. "I hurt you," he whispers. "Real or not real?"

"Not real. _Not_ real, Peeta. I'm fine. I am." I can, in fact, feel the witchy tracery of liquid running down my inner thighs, but it doesn't feel wrong. It feels normal, if a bit messy. I look down at my leg below the skirt, and I see a trickle of pink liquid there, which is probably a combination of him and me.

I don't want him to see it. But I don't want to leave him alone, either. I stand there holding his hands and hoping Dr. Lida will be done with her patient soon.


	22. Chapter 22: Blood Work

**A/N: Shorty chapter here. More developments in the next one. Frighteningly, the plotline keeps getting loooonnnnngger. I think I'm up to 30 chapters now in the plan, and I'll keep posting them here on FF until/unless the story gets kicked off. **

**Also, I do think that the Capitol torturers really did mess with Peeta's sexual image of Katniss. However, I think they were more focused on making him afraid of her so that he'd kill her right away, and their approach was pretty ineffective. They went to extremes, and the angle the hijackers chose doesn't touch easily on the warm and emotional sexual relationship these two have developed.**

Chapter 22

_Dr. Lida Powers_

It's a beautiful warm June day when the Mockingjay comes to the clinic again, this time in the company of her sweetheart.

Lida is coming out of an exam room with her patient, one of the construction guys that's come in from elsewhere. He's got his arm in a sling, and she's warning him to take it easy for a week of so until the sprained wrist has a chance to heal. He nods and smiles at the two – everyone seems to know them – and then goes out, but Lida sees that Peeta's showing signs of a flashback episode.

As soon as the door closes behind him, she grabs Peeta by one shoulder and Katniss takes the other, and they get him down the little hall into the other exam room. Lida unlocks a cabinet with a key attached to a bracelet on her wrist, and takes out a syringe and a little brown bottle.

"What's all this?" she's asking as she fills the syringe part way. "Flashback?"

"I think so," Katniss answers when it becomes apparent that Peeta, sitting rigid on the chair, eyes closed, is unable to reply. "What's that?"

"Mild sedative," she says. "Not a good habit to get into, but sometimes if you give it right away it can keep the flashback from getting worse. What was the trigger?"

"Um, blood," Katniss says, looking down involuntarily. So Lida looks too, and the trickle of red liquid down the girl's leg is obvious.

"Oh," she says. "Well, we'll have a look at that in a minute. Let me take care of Peeta first, unless you think – "

"No, him first," Katniss insists.

"Okay." She asks Peeta to open his eyes, and he does, but his pupils are very small right now, and he still can't talk. She tells him she's going to give him a very mild sedative, and that he can just relax in the chair. She cleans a spot on his upper arm with a clear liquid, and injects the tiny dose of sedative, designed to wear off within an hour. He closes his eyes again, but his shoulders relax a little. Lida pats him on the shoulder and tells him to sit tight, then locks the medicine back in the cabinet.

"Now you," she says to the Mockingjay. She asks about where the bleeding is coming from, and the girl explains composedly that she thinks it's her period. So Lida asks her to strip off below the waist while Lida is getting out her equipment to check. Then she suggests that they can leave Peeta here and go into the other room if Katniss would prefer privacy.

"No, he can stay. Of course he can stay," Katniss says. She looks affronted at the idea, and Lida suppresses a smile. Clearly these two are lovers in every sense of the word now, and she doesn't need the smell of sex on them to be able to tell that much.

She does a physical exam, which the Mockingjay bears as stoically as ever, and takes a small sample of discharge. As she's pulling off her plastic gloves, which are streaked with blood, she says, "Well, this looks like a perfectly normal menstrual period to me. Nothing at all wrong in there. Was this a surprise? I remember it's been awhile since your last one."

The girl pulls a face. "Explains my grouchiness over the last couple of days."

"Sore breasts? Headache?" Lida asks, making notes. The answer is yes to the first, no to the second. "I would like to do some blood work and compare your hormone levels to the last readings, just to check."

Katniss shrugs. "Okay. But maybe you better not take it – " she nods in Peeta's direction – "in front of him."

"Right, we'll face away from him then. Well, go ahead and get dressed," she says, handing Katniss an absorbent pad and her small stack of clothes. She gathers materials for a quick finger stick.

"I'm done," Katniss says, and sits back down on the examination table.

Lida takes two small samples of blood from her finger and puts the tiny vials in an opaque storage block with a lid. She bandages Katniss' finger. While she's working, she asks, "So blood can be a flashback trigger?"

"Yes," Peeta says from behind them, and Lida whips around to look at him.

"Open your eyes," she says, and is pleased to see that the pupils look normal. She runs through a short series of tests designed to check for proper basic brain function, making him follow her finger with his eyes, stand up, touch his toes, answer a few simple questions. "You seem fine. Feeling better?"

He shrugs. "I guess. Katniss is all right?"

Katniss comes over and perches on the arm of the wooden chair. "I'm fine. I told you, nothing to worry about. Just my period."

An expression of consternation crosses his face, and Lida hastens to explain. "No, this is good news. Seems that Katniss' body has regained a healthy weight and started to make a good recovery from the trauma of the past year. This is normal and healthy."

"I was pretty sure what it was by the time we walked over here," Katniss says, a crease between her eyebrows. "Not scary at all."

His shoulders hunch up defensively. "Well, it's not like I had sisters or anything. And you've never done this before, you know." He cocks his head to look at her. "How c_ome _you've never done this before? I mean, I saw you in the Games, and there was never anything like this."

"They give the girls a shot beforehand," Katniss tells him impatiently. "So they don't 'do this' during the Games. And please quit acting like it's gross or something. It's just part of being female."

He opens his mouth, then shuts it. "_What?_" Katniss demands. He shakes his head. "We're not leaving until you tell me."

He looks at her straight-on, and says, soft but firm, "No. But I will talk to Dr. Lida."

Katniss bites her lip. She sighs. "Can I wait outside for you?"

"Outside the building," he says, and pats her arm. "I'm okay. I'll talk to you about it later. But you don't... I need you not to hear this right now." Her face goes carefully blank, and she walks straight out without acknowledging either Lida or Peeta, shutting the exam room door and then the outside door exaggeratedly behind her.

Lida's eyebrows go up. _Stubborn, with a temper,_ she thinks. But Katniss is not being her patient at the moment. Peeta is. And he might be calm right now, but he's got a weight on his chest. "Okay. So tell me." She sits down in the other chair and finds a clean page in his patient file.

"Please don't write anything down just now," he says. "Please. Just let me... just let me tell it. It's hard enough."

Lida puts down the pen, and he starts. He tells her about the flashbacks. What they're like. What he sees during them. What kicks them off. And that if he's tired or in pain or emotional, the triggers have a great deal more effect. All this makes sense to her. Of course he'd be prone to these flashbacks, and of course he'd be more susceptible when he's under some kind of strain.

And then he tells her about how sometimes the flashbacks kick over into hallucinations, and how the hallucinations are what really terrify him, because they make him violent. And he tells her some of the hallucinations that haunt him:

Beast-Mutt Katniss, eight feet tall with fangs and talons, snarling and reaching for him the way they went for Cato.

Monkey-Mutt Katniss, with orange fur and her real gray eyes, chittering and clinging and trying to slash open his chest to get to his heart.

Millions of sparkly red venomous spiders burrowing into his skin after the tracker jacker stings in the first Games, which is also connected to Katniss, because he remembers very well who dropped the nest on him and the Career gang.

The firebombs dropped on Twelve, seen from street level, when he's trying to reach his family, and they're running out of the bakery, and each one of them bursts into flame, one at a time, burning like human torches the way the children did in the City Center. The way Primrose Everdeen burned. He knows he's next. And it's all Katniss' fault.

And Sex-Mutt Katniss, naked and lascivious, engaging in all kinds of kinky congress with Gale Hawthorne or Finnick Odair or a whole line of faceless men, and sneering at him for thinking she could love him. Telling him he couldn't possibly please her in bed, while showing him some disgusting and painful-looking and unnatural sexual practice, which leaves him both hideously aroused and so nauseated that the room spins.

He trails off at this point, looking distinctly green. Lida hands him the metal trashcan. He holds it a minute, takes and lets out a deep breath, and hands it back. "That's how I know... afterwards... that I've been having that particular hallucination. I've punched holes in things, and I've vomited all over the place."

Lida, appalled, hasn't yet thought of what to say.

He goes on, almost talking to himself. "I should talk to Dr. Aurelius about this stuff, I guess. It just never came up. I don't know why." He falls silent, but he's clearly thinking, so Lida stays silent as well while he muses. "I think they actually did show me some raunchy sort of video once while giving me the venom, but just once, and not long before the rebels kidnapped me out of the Capitol. This one is all shiny, the way the altered memories are. And for some reason, _blue_. And I think it was Gale she was with then, doing something so painful-looking and horrible that I can't quite remember it.

"I'm pretty sure that the girl in that video was not her. No, I'm sure it wasn't real." The Katniss in it, he describes, had a body so lush and ripe and glossy, so groomed and symmetrically shaped that it looked absolutely nothing like the body of a girl who grew up in the Seam, eating tessera rations and squirrels, a girl light enough to shinny up trees like a squirrel herself. "I had seen so many video versions of Katniss that when I saw the real her – when I was back to myself again, you know, in Thirteen? – that she didn't even look very familiar. Weird."

He goes quiet again, and Lida lets him think. When he starts to speak, his voice is shaky. "And I'm... scared. I'm scared that I'll hurt her sometime." He clears his throat. "In bed. The blood didn't help. I mean, it's not repulsive or anything, I know girls do that. I did know. I just forgot, because she's never, not since we've been... it's just that... it's_ blood_, and since the hijacking, my first reaction to blood is to connect it with damage and pain."

Lida leans forward a little. "Peeta, I think you're going to have to come to terms with blood. Really. Because this is what a normal woman's body _does_. If it isn't making a baby, it bleeds. Once a month, every month, on average four to seven days. I don't know whether she's going to be back on a regular schedule now that she's menstruating again after almost a year – "

"Why did she stop?" he interrupts to ask.

"Extreme stress, probably. Low body weight, that's another reason," Lida says. "As her doctor, I am _very_ pleased to see it start again, to be blunt." He blinks, nods. "Okay, as I was saying, it may not be every month right now, she may ease into that. It might be irregular for some time." She leans forward again and looks him in the eye. "But you're going to have to deal with it, because it's normal." His eyes skate away from hers. "I don't know how your psychiatrist would advise you to deal with it. But I think you need some help from somebody who knows what he's talking about. Not me. I don't have any experience with it at all."

He sighs, rubbing his eyebrow. "I'll talk to him. You don't have any advice?"

"No. Well, other than to just watch her walking around and being herself over the next couple of days, and reminding yourself that it's a normal development." She sits back. "I mean, she might be grouchy, but that's normal too." There is a short silence. "Are things good otherwise? With you and Katniss?"

Before she's gotten the sentence out, he's smiling. "Yes. Yes. Love, it – love changes everything."

Lida's own grief stabs her in the heart. _I miss you so much, Wynn_. "It does," she says, through a constricted throat. "You'll get through this. Look: love can defeat just about anything evil. You just have to decide, and _keep_ deciding, day after day after day, that you will hold on to the love. And then do it, every day." She stands up, and he does too. "Easier said than done, of course. But I imagine that since you've gotten this far from that terrified kid pumped full of tracker jacker venom I saw in Thirteen, that you can go so much farther now." She gets up. "Call me if you need me, okay?" He nods.

He heads out the door with that same goofy _I love Katniss_ smile, and she watches the two of them embrace there on the street in front of the clinic, not caring who's watching.

**A/N: It's not that I'm suggesting that love's a substitute for psychiatric treatment here. From my experience of loving family members with bipolar disorder, I can say firmly that it is_ not_. But attitude is crucial, and the determination to love someone no matter what can be the difference between the success of a treatment and its failure. Also, it's a long road to healthy, and perseverance is as important as attitude.**


	23. Chapter 23: Don't Want to Think About It

**A/N: Big, messy, emotional,_ smutty_ chapter. There's more coming, I'm just working on it. I know where chapters 25-28 are going and they're mostly written, so hopefully it won't be too long before I update again. Thanks for your patience.**

**As always, I make no claim to own THG.**

Chapter 23: I Don't Want to Think About It

_Peeta_

I step out of the clinic into the sunshine of the street, feeling very much the way I did during the Quell, when the Gamemakers had spun the entire arena around, leaving us all disoriented and shaken.

I feel _blank_ – all empty and tired and slow-thinking, the way I usually feel after an episode, whether I've fought it off or suffered through it.

I feel _drained_, from talking so openly with Dr. Lida about the hallucinations, and exactly what scares the effing crap out of me, because talking about it is almost as bad as suffering through it. Almost. Well, maybe about half as bad.

I feel _stupid_, because perfectly normal girl-blood scared the effing crap out of me.

I feel _guilty_, because it is not Katniss' fault that her perfectly normal girl-blood scared the effing crap out of me.

The one thing I'm not feeling is unmasculine. This whole bleeding-every-month thing is kind of amazing. You tell a guy that once he hits puberty he's going to be periodically bleeding from his personals, and _watch him run screaming_. Seriously, we're all a bunch of wimps in that regard.

But then I've always known that girls were just as tough as guys – tougher, in many ways. Witness my mother, for example, a tough negotiator if there ever was one, never willing to stand any nonsense. She ran the house. And Johanna Mason. If she wanted to, she could probably disembowel me and six other guys in about two minutes, without our being able to stop her. She'd make one swift move, and there we'd be, a line of men with our intestines falling out, going, "How _the hell _did you do that so fast?" And women having babies, that's toughness for you. (And also a sore subject for me right now, thanks, so I'll stop there.) Not to mention the hardened-steel backbone of one Katniss "Mockingjay" Everdeen, the Girl on Fire, enemy of oppressors, protector of the helpless... But me? a couple of smears of blood, and I can't even keep a good hold on my mental processes.

Okay, maybe I'm not being fair to myself. Before the hijacking, blood didn't faze me at all.

I feel oddly _hopeful_ as well. Because Dr. Lida was right: love can conquer evil. I know that myself. How else could I have made any progress away from the hijacking at all? I wanted to remember what it felt like to be _me_, to be that person who loved someone else so much. I'm not the boy I was before the Reaping, but I'm making progress back to healthy. I feel like myself most days. And Katniss loves me. She does. She's waiting right here at the front of the building, squinting into the sun, and then hurling herself at me the second I appear, hugging me hard.

"Everything is fine," I tell her. "It's fine. I'm fine."

"Flashbacks," she says, pulling back to look at me. She seems worried.

"I'm going to have to get used to blood," I say, making a face. "I mean, since this is normal, I can't go all wild-eyed every month. I just... automatically think blood equals pain. And I have to get out of that. I don't know how. But I will. I promise."

"Okay," she says, and takes my elbow. "Back to the bakery?"

"No," I say without even thinking, hit hard by an immediate, gut-level aversion to being there right now. The new building is good, but since it's not finished, sometimes I see the ghosts of my family there. Once the new bakery is built, I hope that they won't haunt me so much. "No, I need a nap. Sorry."

"It's okay," she says. "I'm hungry. Listen, do you need to stop in there and tell them you need a rest before you come back to help? Or you'll be back tomorrow?"

She's right. We stop by, and I tell Finch I will probably be back tomorrow. Or later, depending. He's not concerned – I really think they don't need me, they just allow me to help. Which is fine. Building stuff is the crew's job. Baking will be mine.

I sigh. I hold her hand, really tight, as we walk home. I wonder when she's going to move in with me. Or if she will. I sigh again. Should I ask her to? No. I do enough damn begging, I won't beg for this. If she wants to, she'll say so without my saying anything at all. I don't want to think about it any more.

"Are you okay?" she asks, suspiciously.

"Yeah. Tired. You know these things wear me out."

I don't think she's convinced. And I'm not exactly convincing myself, either. I'm a little confused as to why, now that she does love me – now that we're together and close and she's healing me with her love – why would I have to fight off flashbacks anyway?

I don't know.

But now we're home, and we head inside to the kitchen, tripping over Buttercup, who prefers to stay at Katniss' house – probably still waiting for Prim to come back – but who will sometimes come over and beg us for scraps. Katniss mutters things like "stupid cat" and "still cook you" in his direction, but I notice she finds him a piece of the dried meat jerky she takes into the woods with her when she's hunting and drops it on the floor for him, and then she scratches his head surreptitiously when she thinks I'm not watching her. She makes cheese sandwiches with the dill-onion bread while I fumble around and make some tea with the tea leaves Effie Trinket sent us last week, along with an effusively congratulatory note.

Katniss had read the first sentence of this note, which ran along the lines of, "_My dear Katniss and Peeta, I'm so very glad that you've rekindled your romance..._" out loud, and made a sound halfway between gag and snarl, eyes narrowed in fury. I was forced to take the note away from her to keep her from tossing it into the oven, and had to hide it in order to read the rest, which would have been sickeningly saccharine from anybody else, but which from Effie was rather sweet. I noticed that she said very little about herself in it, other than to mention that this kind of tea is getting difficult to find and she hopes we enjoy it. Very tactful from her, though it carries overtones of classic "_I work my fingers to the bone and you don't even appreciate me_" Effie.

I hear from Haymitch that she barely managed to find a job in the Capitol, which of course has suffered some business setbacks recently, and it's a low-paying clerical thing not worthy of her considerable organizational ability. I don't know if she was offered a job connected with this year's Games, because the idea just makes me _sick _and I try not to hear anything about it at all. But I imagine there was no need for escorts for these tributes, since they're not traveling to the Capitol from elsewhere.

I do not want to think about it. We have been turning off the TV every time anybody mentions something about "the final Hunger Games." I just can't take it. Children sent to gruesome lonely frightened deaths in order to punish their parents. And sentenced to it by people who should know better. It makes me _absolutely sick_. I still can't discuss it with Katniss or Haymitch, who know how I feel and why, and still don't agree with me. I don't even want to think about it.

I manage to eat most of my lunch while Katniss absolutely devours hers, plus the half of my sandwich I didn't finish. She also brought home a small number of wild strawberries, probably the last of this year's crop, and they are tiny and sweet. They taste like sunshine. And the tea, as a matter of fact, is delicious too. Katniss remarks on it, even as she makes an _isn't-Effie-awful? _sort of face.

"I wonder how she knew?" I say, suddenly. "I mean, I suppose everybody in town knows. But if the news has made it to the Capitol..." I trail off, having the terrible vertiginous feeling that hordes of videographers might be heading our way. Might even now be hiding in the bushes. _ Ugh_. Couldn't stand that.

"You look sick," Katniss says, putting her hand to my forehead. I move her hand away and shake my head. "I think she and Haymitch talk on the phone. He said something the other day that made me wonder about it. I can't remember exactly what it was, but clearly they'd been talking recently."

I can't stop thinking about video cameras. How I _hate_ them. It's funny – at one point, I actually thought that Caesar Flickerman had kind of a fun job, its association with the Hunger Games aside. It was nothing more difficult than making other people look attractive and personable and interesting for the cameras. Before the hijacking, I could have done it with my eyes closed, easy peasy lemon squeezy. I think he actually likes people, the same way I do. I like figuring out people, the way they think, the way they will react, what will encourage them to open up.

I can usually find something good in everybody I meet. Even Gale Hawthorne. The thought of him still makes me feel horribly jealous and inadequate (so good-looking, so smart, so competent, and all of it so frigging _effortless, _damn him), but I have to admit that he is a decent person. Honorable, reliable, even likeable. Not that he doesn't have his faults, which seem to be ruthlessness, a tendency toward vengeance, a certain grim lack of humor, and selfishness where Katniss is concerned... but since he shares the first two traits with her, and the last one with me, I really cannot condemn him.

"_Peeta!_" Katniss pokes my shoulder.

"_What?_" I snap back without thinking, and then shake my head. This is Katniss I'm yelling at. "Sorry." There is a pause in which she continues to look both worried and annoyed. "I was just thinking."

"About what?" she demands. "What's got you all upset?"

"Well... if Effie knows that we're together, what's to stop her from telling everyone? What if a whole bunch of video cameras are on their way to Twelve, desperate for film of us and unwilling to leave us alone?"

I've horrified her. Well, I've horrified myself too.

But she shakes it off quickly. "Haymitch," she says, getting up. "He'll know what we've got to face. I'm going to go wring information out of his liver, if necessary. You rest, okay?" She's pushing open the door before I can even respond.

Yeah, like I can rest _now_.

She's back in about ten minutes, kicking open the door. "He was _on the phone_ with her when I went over there, if you can believe that. I could hear her squealing through the line. It was very very weird."

"I always thought there was some strange sort of attraction there," I say, distracting myself from the concept of video cameras by thinking about Effie and Haymitch.

"Oh, I can't imagine that. I don't know exactly what they were talking about, either. Something about some package she sent him."

"Probably something 90-proof," I say dourly. I would rather be distracting myself from video cameras by thinking about Katniss naked, but there is very little point in that at the moment. I allow myself to whine about it in my mind, because whining makes me feel better, and doing it silently cuts down on the _you're-such-a-child_ embarrassment factor.

"I just – Effie and _Haymitch?_ You think there's something going on between them?" Katniss is incredulous. "Can you imagine?"

"I can, yeah," I tell her. "She was always more patient with him than almost anybody else, and Effie is not known for her patience."

"This is true. But would she kiss him? Ugh." She shakes her head. "Anyway, I kind of busted in there and asked what he thought, and if Effie had kept it to herself, and he just _looked_ at me, you know the way he does – like I'm a complete idiot..." I nod. He does me that way too, sometimes. "And he asked Effie if she had told anyone, and I could even hear her through the earpiece, saying – " and here Katniss does her best Effie impression – "'_Haymitch_, you know that I _know_ how much Katniss values her_ privacy_, and that those two have been through _so much_, and I would never _dare_ disturb them with such a thing, and how could you even _ask_ me that?'" She rolls her eyes. "But I think I believe her."

I think I do too. Effie is a rotten liar. She can be sort of fanatical about manners, she cares more about how things _look_ than how things _are_, and she compulsively looks on the bright side of things even when the bright side is maybe an inch square in area, but she doesn't lie.

It's interesting that a woman whose normal appearance is so artificial would be incapable of lying convincingly. It does bring up the idea that perhaps the artificiality served as a sort of mask for her private feelings as well as being a fashion statement.

Katniss peers out the living room window. "If there were cameras out there, would we even see them?"

I never saw any cameras in our first Games. They were quite tiny and built into fixtures like trees and the Cornucopia, according to Haymitch, but I never went looking for them and after awhile I was so busy trying to stay alive that I actually forgot about them. By the time Katniss found me, I was so feverish and ill from my leg wound that from that point on I didn't even remember they were there. I know _she_ was aware of them, from the way she talked about them later. But I don't want to think about that right now.

I tell her, "I don't know. They can be really small, but who would have installed the things close by without us noticing? I think we'd have seen people if they had gotten close enough to us to put in a camera." I am resolutely ignoring our recent distraction with each other. Because there have probably been certain times when Haymitch could have brought every single one of his stupid geese over here and paraded them honking around my house, and we'd have been too busy (and noisy) to notice.

Then I have the sudden irrational fear that sometime when we were gone, some Capitol flunkies came in and installed cameras and microphones all over my house.

But if they'd done that, wouldn't Dr. Aurelius be using them to find out how I'm really doing?

Maybe it was only for Snow's use.

But when would they have done that? During the Victory Tour? Before then? While I was in the hospital and Katniss was in that Training Center cell awaiting trial for shooting Coin?

Why would they even bother? Nobody expected either one of us to have any significance after the war.

"What you are talking about?" Katniss asks me. "It makes me nervous when you mutter like that."

"Just worrying about the stupid cameras again." I shut up. I can't tell her else what I'm thinking. I think at this point we've made love in every single room in this house, and if she thought somebody was watching _that_ on a camera, she'd probably destroy the entire house in a fury.

Well, not really. But she'd want to. And Effie was right, we all know how important her privacy is to her. I don't think she minded the cameras in her room when she was under arrest, but I doubt she cared about anything at that point, from what Haymitch told me about her condition at the time. She's better now, and I would think she'd feel very differently about cameras at this point.

I take a moment to be very very grateful that despite Katniss' general modesty, she doesn't insist on making love only in bed, in the dark, with nightclothes on. But this just reminds me that I can't touch her for the next couple of days. And I don't want to think about that, either.

"_What?_" Katniss demands, spinning around from the other living room window to stare at me. "You keep making all those frustrated noises. You're driving me nuts. I worry about you."

"Sorry."

"And stop apologizing. Just talk to me!" She even stamps her foot.

"Sorr– never mind. I should buy curtains," I muse darkly. "Anybody can just walk by and see what's going on in this house."

"You _hate_ curtains," Katniss says, hands on hips. "You like to be able to see out of the window, wherever you are in the house. And I don't care if there are a million cameras out there, you shouldn't have to put curtains up when the sunshine makes you feel so good."

I shrug, but I can't help smiling just a little. She's noticed. I've never said one word about it – how the upstairs apartment at the old bakery had very few windows, and those quite small, a real burden for a little boy who loved to draw. And how my Capitol cell must have been underground with, of course, no windows at all, nothing but gray concrete and screams and needles and bloo—

_No_. I will _not_ think about that. Because they did their worst, and I'm still here, and I still love her. They failed. I win.

Apparently it has not occurred to Katniss that being able to see _out _of a window also means that someone else can see _in_. I'm not going to say it.

Aaarrrrrgh. With about six distressing subjects that I don't want to think about at the moment, I sure could use a good distraction. I'm tired, but now I'm so worried about stupid cameras and where they might be and if somebody far away is looking at my worried face right now and if somebody close by has been looking in my windows at our naked selves... and other painful things... I know very well that if I went to take a nap, I'd lie there stewing instead of sleeping.

"You're so jumpy," Katniss says. She has come back from the window to stand close to me and put her arms around me. I hold her close and breathe in the smell of her hair (dust and sunshine and green leaves, a hint of hard hat plastic, the warm girl musk of her scalp).

"I'm sorry," I say. "I'm sorry, it's been such a weird frustrating day."

"Come on," she says, and leans back into my arms to see my face. "You're tired and you're jumpy, you need a nap."

"Stop treating me like a toddler," I say, only half-annoyed. "You're not my mama."

"I_ know,_" she says, and gives me one of her rare flirty smiles as she slides her hands down to my butt.

"That is _so _not fair." I move her hands back to my waist, but she slides them back down. "Really. Katniss, stop." I don't have much of a sense of humor about it right now.

She doesn't comment, just rests her head on my shoulder and holds me close. It's nice, but all of a sudden I'm having one of those idiotic irrational arguments with my penis again.

_Me: Get a grip, you ingrate, you just got some a couple of hours ago._

_Peeta's Penis: Yeah, but that was a couple of hours ago._

_Me: And two months ago you weren't getting **anything, **so shut up and count your blessings._

_PP: She wants to. She had her hands all over your ass._

_Me: Bad idea. Trust me, bad idea._

_PP: Go lie down with her. Maybe you can do some stuff. And then maybe she can do some other stuff. It'll be fun._

_Me: It would be kind of nice to relax and not worry about anything for awhile. Be nice to feel loved._

_PP: See? And I'm pretty sure she knows I'm here. She likes me. She likes to make me happy._

_Me: (sighs) Well... maybe we could do some stuff, but not all the stuff._

_PP: I'm up for pretty much any of the stuff._

_Me: Duh. Big surprise there._

It's at this point that Katniss pulls my head down to hers and kisses me. I kiss her back. She pulls me up the stairs and into our bedroom, and kisses me again. We take off my clothes and part of hers, and I remind myself to be satisfied with whatever she would like to do, because it wasn't that long ago that I was ecstatic at the idea of getting to touch her at all.

So I'm feeling grateful instead of resentful when she turns me over onto my stomach and starts to massage my back. It does help relax me, and at the same time, because I'm, duh, _naked_, it's really exciting. Especially when I can feel the whispery tickle of her hair or the softness of her breasts against my skin.

I am truly enjoying this: the caressing pressure on neck and back, and on down to my backside (you know, there are _muscles_ in your butt) and thighs. She massages my one real calf, and then puts her hands on my other knee and asks if she can take off my prosthesis.

I've never minded her seeing it before, or her seeing me without it, either. I used to be pretty self-conscious about it, but by the time we'd done all that training for the Quell, she'd seen it any number of times. I know it bothers her, but not for the reason you'd think. Not because it looks weird, or because it's a flaw, but because she feels guilty that she'd tied the tourniquet that cut off the blood supply to my wounded calf, to try to keep me from bleeding to death.

I tell her sure, go ahead if she wants to take off my prosthesis, and I start to remind her how to do it, but she must have seen me remove it often enough. She has no trouble taking it off. I relax even further.

And then she starts kissing me, all over, starting at my legs and working up. Which might actually be one of the most erotic things I have ever experienced, and that is damn well saying something, considering the effect she has on me just by breathing. It's driving me crazy...

… and I wonder what happened to all my patience. I spent a decade trying to get her to notice me. I spent six months after the Games hoping she'd come tell me that she'd meant the words of love she'd said to me after all. I spent months in hospitals, waiting for my efforts to pay off in recovery. Where's all that patience now? Or am I only patient when there's no alternative?

I decide to dredge it up and live in it for the next chunk of time, waiting to see what Katniss will do. It's surprisingly easy – all I have to do is enjoy the sensations and trust her. And when my mind starts going somewhere I don't want it to go, I go back to living in my patience, feeling her hair on my scarred back, feeling her soft lips on me.

It's beautiful, it really is.

When she gets up to the back of my neck and whispers to me to turn over, I comply and just wait to find out where she'll go next.

She doesn't spend nearly as much time on the front of me. Distracted by my erection? I don't know. I don't care. Soft lips, hair, bare breasts brushing against every part of me she can reach – and then she kisses down the length of me before taking me in her mouth and her hands, and I try to make it last, but soon enough I'm moaning and arching back in ecstasy.

We have only done this a few times before, and only briefly, before moving on to other activities. I try to warn her before I come, but either she doesn't hear me or she wants it to happen this way, me letting go with the soft heat of her mouth around me. It is exquisite.

I'm limp as a rag when she puts her head up to mine and kisses me. Very strange, this, the salty-bitter taste of me on her tongue, and completely intimate. "Thank you," I whisper to her.

"I love touching you," she whispers back. I kiss her hair and cuddle her close as we fall asleep, with no worries whatsoever troubling me.


	24. Chapter 24: Dreams

**A/N: This has been, for some reason, a very difficult chapter to write. I know where we've been... and I've already written 25-28 so I know what happens next, but this one? Grrrrrr. **

**Warning: some smut.**

Chapter 24: Dreams

_Peeta _

I make it through the night. I dream about blood, of course – Johanna's, snaking down her legs after her sessions. Mine, pouring down my thigh from the sword wound in the arena. Brutus' blood, from our fight in the Quell, all over him and me too. Mine again, pouring from my calf where the mutts got to me. Katniss' blood, from that forehead cut she got when she went to the feast to get medicine for me, pooling around her head as she lies unconscious. This last one wakes me up, rigid with fear, and I clutch her tight.

She stirs just enough to sigh and hold me closer, and I relax a little. I whisper her name. Stroke her hair. My first inclination is to kiss her all over, just to assure myself that she's real and whole and alive, but that usually leads to a middle-of-the-night quickie, and I remember I can't do that at the moment.

Damn.

But holding her is enough. I lie still and feel everything around me, just to make certain that this is _now_, not in the cave: We have pillows, not rocks. Sheets, not a sleeping bag. My thigh feels fine, and I only have one real foot. Katniss' hair smells clean.

Yeah, this is _now_.

I could spend time thinking about all the ways that _now_ is worse than _then_, but I do it the other way around. Just for practice.

Now, there is no Snow.

Now, there are no punishments or curfews or threats from Peacekeepers in the district.

Now, there are no Reapings in the districts. (I am resolutely ignoring the upcoming "final" Hunger Games. There's a pool of 55 children of the appropriate age, all related to people who were instrumental in Snow's government or who were higher-up military personnel. The tributes will be drawn from those, I understand. I saw this on the news, but couldn't watch any more.)

Now, there are no mines.

Now, Katniss lives at my house.

Now, we love each other. No fakes. No cameras.

In those ways, now is definitely better. I go back to sleep, and only wake near dawn with another nightmare, this one of the firebombs hitting District Twelve after Katniss blew out the arena force field.

The bakery explodes in flames. From a hovercraft above, I see two figures stumble out of the building. Both of them are on fire, struggling, writhing in pain, and then they fall into the street and are consumed by flames. Other houses around the square are burning too. _Katniss_. Katniss' fault. "She did this," President Snow says to me, in his soft intense voice. "Katniss Everdeen's choices have destroyed your family. Katniss killed everyone in the district. All your friends, all your neighbors. Katniss did this." _Katniss_.

I sit up with a jerk, sweating. Am I dreaming? Is this real? I shake the dark figure next to me. "Katniss!"

"Hmm?"

"You killed my family. Real?"

She sits up quick, and it _is_ her, in the faint light from the window. I gasp. "Not real, Peeta. Not real." She kisses me, and I almost flinch back. "Bad dream? Are you okay?"

I draw a shaky breath and reach for the bedside lamp. I have to _see_. She blinks and squints in the light. Reason asserts itself. That was Snow telling me it was her fault, so of course it wasn't real. Here she is, in my bed with her hair loose and tangled, her cheeks and lips rosy with sleep. I take a deep breath and stretch the kinks out of my neck. She's real. I turn the light back off and reach for her. Kiss her, cup her beautiful little breasts in my hands through her nightgown... press my groin against her hip.

She kisses me back. It's only when I touch the juncture of her thighs and feel the layers of cloth there that I remember she's off limits. I move my hand away.

"It's okay," she whispers to me, "we can if you want. I can put a towel on the bed. It will be a little messy, but I don't think it would be horrible."

"No, I can't." I do really need her, really need to be inside her, in that place that feels like home. But not with blood involved. Not the way I've been dreaming tonight. She reaches for me anyway, curls her warm hand around me through my pajama pants, strokes gently. "No," I repeat, and move her hand away. I kiss her and resettle us in a comfortable position. In this mood, I'd like nothing better than to make love with her, make all my pain go away... but it's not going to work right now.

I resign myself to remembering that not getting any doesn't kill you. I think about all those nights on the train when I managed not to touch her. I was there for her, that's all I needed. Holding her close, I drift back to sleep.

When I wake again she's gone, so I bake some wheat loaves and a few batches of cinnamon buns, and then head out to town to see how the construction's going. The interior walls are framed, and the drywall's going up. It looks great, and it's pretty exciting to think that I'll be working in such a nice place, feeding everybody in town. When you've seen enough people starve to death, providing food is such a satisfying enterprise. No wonder Katniss keeps bringing home more game than we can eat every day. Somebody can always use it.

I hand around the baked goods and help with the drywall for a couple of hours. I spend part of the morning hammering and not thinking, which is probably good for me once in awhile, good to get some frustrations out without breaking stuff, which I tend to do when I'm stressed.

I decide not to go home for lunch, as it's a temptation that just makes things more difficult. Instead, I go to the trading center, the new market area. It's not even a proper building yet, just a roof and some sturdy posts, and people bring produce and clothing and other items for trade or sale.

Sae has a little stall here, where she does lunch and early supper. Today she's got a stew of squirrel (bet I know where she got that!), corn, tomatoes, and lima beans, with some fresh herbs. It's delicious. I haven't had any of her food recently, since Katniss and I have been cooking for ourselves. I try to pay her for a bowl, but she just waves me away with a smile. "You've already fed me today, youngun," she says. "Good wheat bread." Her granddaughter Mamie's here, playing with a little rag doll that's got a face embroidered on it. The doll's like a small version of Mamie, and when I lean down to give her the cinnamon roll I've brought her, I tell her how cute the doll is, and how much it looks like her, and she smiles.

It makes my chest ache. I love kids.

I can't wait to have some of our own. Someday. In the meantime, I'm just going to spoil every single kid in town with cookies. Once the bakery's up, that is.

It won't be all that long. I'm hoping that I'll be able to open up before what they're calling the Final Hunger Games begins. I don't want to know, I don't want to hear or see or even imagine it. If the bakery's open, I'll keep myself busy.

If it's not ready, then maybe Katniss and I will just stay home all day and keep each other amused. I can think of _several_ ways to do that.

When work recommences on the interior walls after lunch, I go upstairs and watch them put up the drywall in the apartment. It's strange to be here – even though this is not the same apartment, and all the walls and windows are very different, it's the same location on earth where I grew up.

The kitchen was right here. The table was right here, here was where we sat and ate our dinner and we boys eyed our mother to see if we could talk freely or not, depending on what sort of mood she was in. If the day had gone relatively well, we could talk about school. If it hadn't, the only sound at the table was that of utensils scraping dishes clean.

Mother always waited until the rest of us had been served before she sat down at the table with her plate. And now that I remember, now that I look back at her plate, it was always a little less full than mine. She might have resented me for it, but she did make sure I ate.

I don't think I ever wished her ill. I was angry sometimes, but what do you do with anger at your mother? Is that ever useful? I don't think so. I was ashamed of my anger then, and I'm ashamed of it now. She did her best. Her best was not very good. That's just the way it was.

What I wanted, what I longed for in bed at night, was to be worthy of love. I would do it right, give it my best, and my best was going to be something to admire. That's what I planned. I used to lie there and think of things I could do to make Mother happy. Or to please a girlfriend (faceless, nameless, just-a-girl), since the girl I wanted never seemed to look at me, or indeed at anybody else. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was my fault.

"You okay, buddy?" one of the construction guys asks me, clapping me on the shoulder.

"Yeah, fine," I tell him, but my mind is full of Katniss. I need her arms around me. I want her love. "I have some things to do at home," I tell the guys, and Finch says for me to go do whatever I need to do.

When I get home, Katniss is working on the Memory Book. She's not been exactly stealthy about it lately – she's been writing about Prim, transcribing little scribbled notes into the book in her best handwriting, wiping away her tears, but she hasn't asked me to add any drawings or paintings. I don't know why.

I do know that even if she did, I don't think I'm up to that right now. I've finished those big canvases I painted of Katniss, and I've stacked them against the wall so they don't smack her in the eye every time she goes into my painting room. Which, to be honest, she rarely does. She seems to know that I would rather not have anybody, even herself, wandering around in there and looking at the stuff I paint.

I can't paint right now. Every time I've tried recently, the whole thing winds up looking like blood. It's horrid.

When she sees me, she looks up and smiles, but I can tell she's been crying. "You okay?" I ask.

"A little sad," she tells me. "I was thinking about how Prim and my mom used to sit for hours in the winter and play Cat's Cradle with a piece of string. Even when Prim was really little, she loved to play. I got impatient with the tangles and always wanted to go for the easy route, the way that seemed clearest even if it wasn't." Her eyebrows quirk up and she smiles ruefully. "I guess I still haven't learned that lesson."

"Are you going to work on it this afternoon?" I want to know.

"I think so," she says. "I have this whole page to write. Hey, Greasy Sae came by and brought us a big pot of Brunswick stew. She says you like it."

I nod. "I do. That was nice of her. Think I'll go take a nap now, okay?"

"Okay." And just like that, she's back to writing in the book and I don't exist.

Maybe that's not fair. I told her I was going to nap for awhile.

But if she loved me, wouldn't she have noticed I'm upset?

But she's upset too.

I think I hate myself. I am a petty, selfish bastard.

In the bedroom, I strip down to underwear and get under the covers, but sleep eludes me. The pictures that stretch across the screen in my brain are of Johanna and Annie in the cells in the Capitol, Annie coming back to her cell after a session, crying and bleeding down her arms, and Johanna standing at the door of her cell, telling Annie we were still with her.

And – bang, I'm back there in my mind. Pain. Anguish. Confusion. More pain, different kinds of pain...

Katniss comes into the room, and I turn into a frightened child, screaming and burrowing under the covers, before I understand who she really is. No mutts, no evil killer girl, but my sweet Katniss, lying next to me looking worried, stroking my hair. I say her name.

"Are you back with me?" she whispers.

I think so. I nod.

The next day, and the day after that, are unadulterated hell.

I am free of my Capitol cage, free of the handcuffs and restraints, free as air – but I'm a prisoner of my mind.

The morning of the second day after Katniss starts her period, I'm so distracted by my physical needs that I burn myself on a hot pan, baking _cupcakes_, of all things. It was a frivolous thing I was going to do just for me, bake cupcakes and spend way too long making them pretty, and then give them away to every kid I could find.

But instead, I burned myself, and the pain, negligible as it really is, shoots me straight back to my cell, where the pain inflicted on me was never quite as great as the terror those white-coated people made me feel.

While my mind goes away, the cupcakes sit on top of the hot stove, and they get so crusty on the bottom that they are inedible. I mean, the tops look great. The bottoms are burned, and I have had freaking enough of looking at burned things, so once I come out of my pain-and-fear fugue state and see the ruined happiness in my kitchen, it nearly kicks me right back into another fugue.

But I can't, I tell myself, I can't. I need to bake real bread for people who will need it today. So I do the plainest loaves I know, and way too many of them, because I'm feeling guilty. And when Katniss gets home with a mess of fish, I seriously feel like pitching a fit because the oven is still busy and I'm still busy and once again I don't get to do what I want to do, which is hold her and love her and just make all the crap go away.

I stomp around. I don't eat lunch. I don't even let her put some of her mother's herbal cream on my burn.

I don't deserve any of that – lunch, hugs, burn treatment. I'm such a basket cast. I'm mad at myself, really. It's not her fault. I tell her that several times, but that little crease between her eyes stays put, and I can tell she's worried about me.

This only makes me angrier.

I go call Dr. Aurelius, and he spends what I would call an inordinate amount of time counseling me about expressing my feelings instead of repressing them. I tell him he's full of it, because all being angry out loud does is make me feel _guilty_. Not once in my life has expressing my feelings done me any damn good, except maybe recently. In _bed_, Dr. Aurelius.

He keeps asking questions: Have I been painting? No. Have I been working on the Memory Book? No. Have I been seeing "ghosts"? Yep, been seeing my family all week. Have I shared my feelings of sadness and regret and loss and anger with anybody?

Well, no. Because. I told you why, Dr. Aurelius.

He insists that I talk to someone about it – Haymitch, Katniss, Johanna, _somebody_. I tell him we can't locate Johanna, and he says he'll try to track her down.

I tell him something's burning in the oven, and I have to go. Complete lie. Or, rather, a delayed one, if you count the burnt cupcakes.

But while Katniss stays home and prepares sunfish and watercress and a strange orange fruit she got at the market today, I go interrupt Dr. Lida's dinner and talk both her ears off.

About everything.

All she does is listen, but it is amazing how much that helps. She's not trying to fix me the way Aurelius does, and she doesn't worry about me the way Katniss does, and she doesn't make me go away because every word of my pain ignites her own, the way Haymitch does.

And I feel better – lighter, somehow. Like I've taken off a pair of heavy, heavy boots. Especially when, as I'm leaving, Dr. Lida hugs me and tells me that if she were my mother, she'd be so proud of me she'd bust her buttons, which I don't know exactly what that means, but I don't care. I can tell from her expression that it's something good.

When I finally get home and hug Katniss and tell her what's going on with me, she holds me so tight I can barely eat my belated dinner. (It's overcooked, except for the fruit, which when cut looks like something we ate at breakfast in the Capitol a lot. I love the stuff. She must have known.)

I am exhausted. Dr. Aurelius always says emotional work is hard work. I even collapse into bed without taking a shower or removing my prosthesis.

Katniss does that for me. But when she starts kissing me the way she did the night before, I make her stop. I can't keep using the delicious intimacy we have to distract me from problems.

But she pushes me down and lies on top of me and kisses me and touches me, and in no time I am so mindless with pleasure I can't quite remember my name or even why it is that I really should not make love to her.

When she takes me into her mouth, I sit up, feeling guilty. "Stop, Katniss. Really. I know it's not easy for you to do this sort of thing for me and not have me reciprocate. C'mon, love, take it easy on me, okay?"

She just looks up at me and keeps stroking her fingers, lightly, down the length of me. "You remember the afternoon you kept doing this for me?" she asks me, her voice level, like she's trying to make a point.

I do remember, as a matter of fact. I remember how arousing it was to please her.

"You remember that even though I told you to stop because it was enough, you didn't stop, and you made me finish four times?" She keeps looking at me through her lashes, hands busy, and I have to remind myself to keep breathing.

I remember how powerful it made me feel, to be able to do that for her. To please her, even when she didn't think it could be done again. And I remember how incredible it was to move back up the bed afterward and claim her body with mine, crying out my own pleasure into her mouth.

"_Well,_ then," she says, and smiles, and lowers her head again. I can't think of a way to stop her, or a reason to. And it is again exquisite and sweet, and I sleep all night afterward.

I make it through the next day by drawing picture after picture of Prim. I can't show them to Katniss yet, but I draw them, in private, in my painting room. In pencil, in charcoal, in pastels. Prim smiling at her goat, Prim in tears the day of the Reaping, Prim laughing at me from the other side of a chessboard (I never did manage to teach her how to play properly). Prim in a pretty dress for Annie and Finnick's wedding.

I do not draw Prim in flames.

On the evening of the third day of her period, right after we've cleaned up the dinner dishes and have gone into the living room to see if there's any news broadcast we need to see on TV, Katniss tells me that she thinks she's nearly finished. Then she cocks her head just a little at me, to make sure I know that it's now, apparently, flashback-proof. Safe.

I stall. Still nervous, I guess. "I see," I tell her, and she smiles and comes over to curl up on the couch next to me.

"I missed you," she says, putting her head on my shoulder.

I have missed her too. Unlike her, I have not exactly kept my feelings private. I have been whiny and resentful and a general pain in the butt, and I don't know how she's been putting up with me.

"I mean, I _really_ missed you," she says, putting her mouth up next to my ear to say this very softly. Her breath is a sort of caress on my neck.

"Oh, you had me," I say, playing hard to get and managing not to smirk.

"Sort of. But not the way I wanted you." She kisses my cheek, then my earlobe, then my neck, little soft warm open kisses that are starting to make me not be nervous. "Mmm. You smell good." She kisses me farther down on my neck and onto my throat, and slides her tongue a little ways along my collarbone, which has an extraordinary effect on my lower half. "Taste good, too."

Well, that did it. I'm all in now, possibility of flashback be damned. I haul her onto my lap and slide my hands up her thighs under her skirt to her sweet girly little ass, and hold on tight. God, she feels so good, my Katniss...

Out of nowhere I'm transported back to how it felt to stand there in the square and watch her, this girl I loved and hardly knew, offer her life in place of her sister's, and then to have my own name called. Practically a death sentence for both of us. Two teenagers stepping onto a sleek Capitol train together, already dead but they don't quite know it yet. That feeling of being hopeless, of knowing you're going to stop breathing very soon, but also of being right on the knife-edge of existence, of really _living_ the last days you have. And I'm so overwhelmed, so amazed, that I start to cry.

Tears start dripping down my face, and I can't breathe. "What's wrong, what's wrong?" she keeps asking, "Peeta, what's wrong?"

I try to tell her. "Two years ago we were supposed to die. But we didn't. A year ago we were supposed to die again, but we didn't. And for a whole six months after that we were a hair away from dying in war, but we didn't do that either. And at any time afterward we could have given up and died from wounds and grief and guilt, but we didn't. We are alive. We are still here, and we're here _together_." I can't talk anymore, I'm crying too hard, and I feel her shaking in my arms as we cry together.

The crying eventually settles into lovemaking, and none of our lovemaking heretofore has felt quite like this, so bittersweet and achy, so tender, with such an awareness of pain inside the joy. Afterwards I say so to her, and she looks at me strangely.

"It _always_ feels like that to me," she says. "I always remember how easy it is to lose someone. I always remember how close I came to losing you. How I could stilllose you." I'm stunned. And then, all of a sudden, I understand why she doesn't want children: she doesn't want to love them and risk losing them. She quite literally cannot bear this risk.

I stroke her face. "I understand. I do, I understand now. Oh, Katniss." I'm close to tears again. I had not realized that for me there would be this sacrifice, that I would have to choose between having Katniss and being a father.

There is, really, no choice at all, no sacrifice. I love_ her_. I will always love her.

I look into her tear-reddened eyes and in them I see all our children, all the combinations of the two of us that might someday have been born: a son like myself, a daughter like her mother... a son with her coloring and my broad shoulders, a daughter that looks like Prim except with my brother Ryen's rakish grin... a daughter with Katniss' hair and my eyes, a son with the reverse... and I say goodbye to all of them.

I know that I may always long for them. Let me be this honest, at least – let me say that I feel sharply the loss of the children that Katniss and I won't have together. Let me say that I will always reserve a place in my heart for our children, and that if by some miracle she changes her mind, I will love and cherish and protect them with every particle of me. But let me also admit that I see their beautiful cherubs' faces in my mind, and I kiss them tenderly goodbye, and I let them go.

Because we have done, and probably will continue to do, much grieving over those who were born and yet died untimely. I won't add to that burden. I can do at least that much.

With love and sadness I let those dream-children go. And I take the girl – the _woman_ – who should have been their mother into my arms, and I kiss her face with the same tenderness. If someday she decides to give me the gift of our children, it really will be a gift worth waiting for.

"I can't live without you," she confesses, her hand on my cheek. "I can't, I really can't. So stay with me, Peeta, please."

"Always," I tell her, once again.

**A/N #2: I'm actually on the road this week, taking my daughter to visit college campuses, so I may not be able to update quickly. Bear with me, please! Once I get 24 up and going, I'll probably be able to post through Ch. 28, but then I'll have to catch up again.**


	25. Chapter 25: Our Bed Now

**A/N: Warning: some smut here, and some questionable actions on the verge of violence, if not all the way into it. As always, I make no claim to own any part of THG.**

Chapter 25: Our Bed Now

_Katniss_

The loving helps. We wrap ourselves around each other and forget the world, secure in the fact that here in our bed we are whole and perfect and complete and capable of so, so much joy.

There are setbacks, of course. The mere fact of our happiness together begins to bring up all the ways in which we are unhappy. I've noticed this before: when I laugh, it always ends in tears, because I realize that so many of the people I have loved are no longer here to laugh with me. It hurts. It's as if the joy highlights all the pain and all the loss.

We begin to work on the Memory Book again, as the construction crew finishes the new bakery and we regroup after the unexpected nightmare of Peeta's reaction to my monthly period. It's not easy.

I find my backbone and stretch it up tight, and then I begin to write in the Memory Book, on Prim's pages, all the things that I'd written down on various scraps of paper, whenever I remembered something good about Prim. It takes a long time, because I wanted these pages to be carefully done, to get Prim _right_ – or at least as right as I could do. I'm not ready for Peeta to paint her here yet. He's too good, it's too immediate. But soon.

And I write a lot of things in my father's pages too. I remember the smell of his work clothes, the sandpaper roughness of his cheeks when he came home, the gentle way he hugged "his girls," as he called us. His cheerfulness. His smile. His patience at teaching me things in the woods. His voice.

There is perhaps nothing sweeter to a little girl than the sound of her father's voice, talking to her. Explaining. Coaxing. Telling her stories, singing her songs.

I miss him so much. So much. I cry a lot while I'm writing Daddy's pages. But I always assure Peeta that I'm fine. I'm just feeling the sadness and loss that I couldn't let myself feel when he died, and it's going to take a while to go through it. It's somehow less... immediate, somehow, than all the other losses of the past year. It hurts less.

Funny how losing almost everyone else I love has brought Daddy back to me, as a comfort rather than a horror. I've dreamed about him twice this past week. He comes to me in clean work clothes, smiling, and he reminds me how strong I am and how I can still hold on to his love even though his body is no longer with me. He sings for me, and all the mockingjays echo back.

I think Daddy would have loved Peeta, partly for himself and partly for the way he loves me. They wouldn't have had much in common, and I think Daddy would have laughed himself breathless at Peeta in the woods, but I think that he would have admired Peeta's paintings very much. Lovers of beauty can always find something to talk about.

Peeta's had a rough week. I know that. At least two flashbacks, and at least three episodes fought off. But once I finished my period, he seemed to calm down some. The twitches went away, and he has kissed me and held me and kissed me and told me over and over that he loves me and that he's so happy. He's made naughty little jokes again, which would make me simply roll my eyes if it weren't proof that he is happy to be with me. Naughty, happy Peeta does my heart so much good.

And I suppose Haymitch is roughing it, too, because he hasn't had dinner with us for several days, and the geese honked our ears off yesterday because they hadn't been fed. (Peeta went over and fed them some stale bread when the noise started getting to him.)

But every time I go into town, to see how the construction of the bakery is going or to trade some game, I see more and more people there, and it feels, I don't know, good. Better. It aches that so many familiar faces are gone, but new ones help fill out the empty places. And although some secret dark side of me wants the devastation to continue, to reflect the blasted desert places inside my heart, the part of me that rejoices over dandelions thrills over the changes, telling me that life should win. Always.

And so, with this tiny constant vibration of hope in my heart, it is a real shock to me when Peeta goes berserk in the middle of the night.

I didn't see it coming. It had been a pent-up sort of day, not as much loving as usual. I'd gone hunting in the morning early without waking him. Then when I got home, starving for lunch and for him, he was standing on Haymitch's front walk, staring at Haymitch's door and looking as much like a thundercloud as a blond person can.

In an eerie sort of way, he looked like Gale. That was _Gale's_ forbidding frown, _Gale's_ brooding thousand-yard-stare. I recognized them. They looked so odd on Peeta's face. Even Hijacked Mutt Peeta back in Thirteen hadn't looked this determinedly angry. I shivered.

I went around back to clean and gut my haul – four squirrels, three rabbits, plenty for us and Haymitch and Sae and her granddaughter – and clean up before going in the house. There was stew on the stove, mostly beans and hominy with the last of yesterday's squirrel for flavor, and corn muffins instead of the usual loaves of bread. "Peeta?" I called, not finding him on the first floor. I checked out the front window and he was still standing in the same place on Haymitch's walk, glaring.

I went out and hugged him from behind. "Hey. You hungry?" He let me lead him back to his kitchen, not talking. I told him about my day so far, the sunrise, the game, the unexpected stash of hickory nuts I'd found in a hollow log. The success I'd finally had with setting one of Gale's trickier snares. He nodded and smiled, but he felt so far away. I figured we might be in for a flashback, or that he'd already had one. Distant behavior is pretty common with those, and his week had already been so difficult.

By the time lunch was over, he seemed in a better mood. We went upstairs together, took off our clothes, got into bed. We made love tenderly and sweetly with kisses and caresses, and it wasn't until later, after our nap, that I'd realized he'd been completely silent since I'd gotten home.

In the afternoon, since Peeta seemed to be seeking the refuge of sleep, I took Sae her rabbits and a squirrel. That little granddaughter of hers was running around all excited because they'd gotten new neighbors – the McAvoys were back, complete with a toddler and a small girl, and the girls loved playing together. I stayed longer than I meant to, because I was enjoying myself more than I'd meant to.

Dinner was the rest of the stew, to which I'd added some mushrooms and two of the squirrels, along with some wild onions. Peeta ate, telling me it was good and teasing me that I was finally developing some cooking skills. He was quiet and I thought he was just getting over a flashback episode. He had that weary look around his lips, and occasionally, when his gaze was directed at something other than my face, an expression of anger mixed with fear would flash across his features.

I began to worry.

And when we went up to bed, he was still quiet. He went about the room doing his usual unwinding sort of tasks – closing the bedroom door, putting his clothes into the hamper, lining up his shoes on the floor, straightening the objects on the dresser. "Peeta?" I was sitting on the bed, still in my clothes, just watching him. This was not the twitchy, jumpy man of a few days ago, during the time we'd had to avoid making love. His movements were controlled but somehow emphatic, each one of them an angry silent NO. He was reminding me of myself, my own way of doing things in a manner such that each motion was a protest. "Peeta, something is wrong. Please talk to me."

He exhaled through his nose, sharply, not looking at me. Scratched aimlessly at his chest hair. Opened his mouth. Closed it. "I'm not upset at you," he said.

"But you are upset. You're angry. Please talk to me."

This time he did look at me. "They're going to hold the 'final Hunger Games' soon. The tributes go to the Training Center _tomorrow_. That doesn't bother you?"

So soon? I hadn't known. Hadn't wanted to know, really. "It does, actually." I don't feel the same way I did last winter, when I wanted everyone I did not personally love punished for the death of the people that I _had_ loved. I wanted them to_ pay _for killing Prim, and Rue, and Finnick, and my father. I had wanted every person in the Capitol dead, dead-dead-_dead_, and if I couldn't have that, I'd settle for their beloved young ones dead instead. Now? I just want us to heal. Them, _and _me. "If I could vote again, I think I'd change my mind. It's too cruel. It solves nothing." I shook my head. "They're children. Killing them won't bring all the others back."

He blinked at me. I'd surprised him. "I feel that way too. That it won't help." He sighed, looking down.

"Do you think we could stop the Games now?" I asked him. "Because I don't think we could."

"I think you're right, we can't stop it now," he said. He sighed once more and stripped off his boxers, tossing them into the hamper too. "I'm taking a shower." At the door to the bathroom he turned back to me. "Do you think we could make sure this really is the last one, though? Do you trust Paylor?"

"I think so," I said, remembering the haggard leader I saw in Eight, filthy and wounded but still fighting for her people. I have not kept up with the news, and I don't know how she is handling being in charge of the entire country. I wonder how she likes living in the Capitol. "I don't want to go back there. The Capitol." I managed not to shudder. "In fact, I'm not supposed to go back there. Unless they tell me to. And I'm glad of it."

His eyes met mine, and he looked so serious, so fierce. I remember him in the glowing-coals costume of our second tribute parade, the way I'd thought his eyes could never be truly deadly even with makeup. I was wrong. Peeta can be fierce – in loving, in protecting. Just not for himself.

"I don't want to go back there either," he said, dropping his gaze and moving toward the bathroom.

"Do you want me to come into the shower with you?" I asked. Perhaps that would help. I wanted to hold him.

"No. I'm fine." And he closed the bathroom door with that controlled violence he'd had all afternoon.

I exhaled as much tension as I can, hearing the water come on. I'd already brushed my teeth, so I put on that ancient nightgown of Mother's that he loves so much to take off me. I turned back the covers on our bed and plumped up the pillows, and wondered when it was that "Peeta's bed" turned into "our bed."

I started thinking hard: _Maybe I should move in, just move every single bit of my stuff over here. I'd like to. What that means to him, I'm not sure. But it comes to me that all this time we've been living together just as if we're married, and I don't know what's stopping us from really being married. Signing papers at the Mayor's office, making it official. We're both of age now, we won't need my mother's permission. We wouldn't even have to tell anybody._

_I'm not quite sure when my feelings changed, or even if this is a good idea. What if he wants children so badly that he resents me for not having them? What if he – _

The water shut off in the bathroom, and I heard him banging around in there, still completely unable to walk quietly. It made me smile a little. Suddenly the door opened – again with that rigidly-controlled forcefulness that's had me on edge because it's so unlike him – and he was back, wearing just a towel, beads of water on his skin.

He came right to the bed and sat down, looking at me. Leaned over and seized both my shoulders. Worried look on his face. "You're with me. You're staying with me. We're together. Real or not real?"

"Real. I'll always stay with you." I reached up and kissed him, wanting to tell him how much I love him but not finding the words. I decided to show him instead.

That night in bed, we did things we've never done before, things that if you'd told me about them I might not have believed were proper or pleasant or even possible. It was a little wild, this walking on the edge of a cliff, and it was a little frightening to me how much I liked it. How much I liked abandoning control to Peeta, how I welcomed the pleasure so intense that it skated close to pain.

It might have been excessive. I know we made a lot of noise. I felt faintly, but just faintly, guilty at my wantonness. Mostly I felt a sort of accomplishment, a secret delight at how completely I can exhaust him, this sweet stubborn boy who loved me when no one else did – just look at that flush on his cheeks, his hair soaked with sweat. That last groan as we almost died in each other's arms... who else could I trust with all of myself? Who else could I ever please as much? Only this boy, only this one I love so deeply.

What we'd just done to each other, well, that was... unusual for us, but it still felt close to innocent to me because it came out of love. It's always just the two of us. In no way is it wrong or dirty or bad. And I fell asleep in his arms feeling loved.

Some time during the night, I wake up partway, feeling his mouth on my breast and his hands between my thighs. Still drowsy, but beginning to remember our earlier passion, I reach for him. I murmur, "Oh yes, oh yes, please," and he pushes inside me roughly, ignoring my small grunt of discomfort. He stays rough, pulling me closer to him with one hand under my buttocks, plunging deep and fast, and as I wake up more I begin to wonder if he isn't quite awake himself.

"Peeta," I say, urgently. "Peeta, that kind of hurts. Can we slow down a little?" I try to nudge him into letting my bottom go. "It hurts. Please stop a minute."

He says nothing, staring over my head with glazed fierce eyes, and as my eyes adjust I see that he is awake but not really with me. _Oh God, it's a hallucination_, I realize. _A bad one. Oh God, don't let him really hurt me_.

"No! No, Peeta, please stop, just until I get adjusted here," I plead. "Please. I love you. Please just wait a minute." I put my hands on his chest and push, wriggling to get out from under. Which I would never have been able to do, really – even too thin, he's still so strong. He holds me tighter, thrusting hard, and I wriggle harder. It's not supposed to be like this, this is not us! _'_It doesn't last much longer. Within a few seconds, he groans in climax, pulls out of me as roughly as he'd entered me, and immediately whirls to vomit onto the floor.

Completely unsettled, I scoot out of bed and grab my robe, looking backward at the door to see if he's following me. He's not. He's still leaning over the side of the bed, gagging, clutching his head.

I say his name, questioning. "Don't touch me," he chokes out. He sounds like he's swallowed broken glass. "Get out, don't touch me!" I hesitate there at the door, unsure. Maybe I can help, talk him down... "Get out! _ Go_ _away_, don't let me hurt you any more!"

I get out. Fast. I pull that robe on and run straight for Haymitch's, not bothering with shoes or knocking.

Haymitch is, unbelievably, still awake. He's slumped at his kitchen table, heavy-eyed and surly and only about halfway drunk. "Whatcha want, sweetheart?" he snarls at me. "I'm busy."

"Peeta," I pant, trying to catch my breath between sobs. "Hallucinating."

Haymitch sits up straighter. "He chasing you? He hurt you?"

"I don't think so. No. I'm okay. He told me to get out and not to touch him."

Haymitch gets up and goes into his study, steadier on his feet than I'd expected. I follow him. He picks up the phone – good thing Effie had insisted on its being replaced – and dials. "Who are you calling?" I asks through chattering teeth. I am freezing, and not because of the weather.

"Lida," he says, waiting for the call to go through. He waves an arm at me, absentmindedly. "Get that blanket off the couch."

"In a minute," I say. "She might want to talk to me."

She does. After a muttered conversation, Haymitch hands the phone to me. Dr. Powers, calm as ever, says, "You're not hurt, Katniss?" _No_. "He's still in the house?" _ I don't know. I think so. He was throwing up_. "Okay, you lock Haymitch's door until I get there and sit tight. I've got some heavy-duty tranquilizers, if I can get close enough to him without getting hurt. I'll be there as soon as I can." She hangs up. Haymitch goes to lock the door and bring me the blanket.

I sit in the big chair, draped in the blanket, and without meaning to, start to cry. Were Peeta's demons going to destroy my little nest of trust? I'd been so _happy_. Not an "everything is perfect" happy, but I'd had the kind of joy laced by pain that lightened my guilt-ridden, depressed existence, made me feel like a human instead of a strange kind of mutt, whose very touch caused the deaths of those she knew. This is breaking my heart. My tears turn to sobs.

_Oh, Peeta. All you'd wanted was for them not to change you. _

**A/N: My thanks to DeeDeeINFJ for the "naughty, happy Peeta" line. Mwah-mwah, air kisses to both your cheeks.**

**Also, and this is _way_ important, I have to emphasize that Peeta is skating the line here with the angry sex. She said yes first and then stop, and although we know our boy would have stopped if he'd been in his right mind, he wasn't, and he didn't. **

** If this happens to you in real life, CALL THE POLICE. I don't care if he _is_ your boyfriend. Take care of yourself.**


	26. Chapter 26: River

**A/N: Okay, I realize that I originally said "some minor characters out of canon," and this character has gone all real in my head, no longer minor. So I apologize for being misleading, but I don't apologize for Lida. I _like_ her. Also, I suspect that being a mother myself, I really really just want Peeta, who might be one of my favorite literary characters EVER (along with Sam from Lord of the Rings), to finally get a mother who acts like one, even if she's only a sort-of mother substitute. **

Chapter 26: River

_Dr. Lida Powers_

She'd been expecting something of this sort to happen. Not because she wanted it to, or because she was cynical – but because this was the way it usually happened. PTSD, which develops in people who've faced high-alert situations in which harm is done, is a lifelong disorder. Patients are almost never the same afterwards, especially when the situation is repeated or continues over a period of time. Usually they require medication to stabilize their fear for the rest of their lives. More frequently, they require behavior modification therapy in conjunction with medication. Any kind of stress or fear situation could possibly dump the patient straight back into whatever mental hell they were subjected to before.

According to the research on hijacking, most patients subjected to the treatment had killed themselves as soon as they could possibly do it, unless they were killed by law enforcement personnel following a vicious attack on someone else. Up until now, the longest-surviving hijack patient had made it three and a half months, and that only because he'd been in restraints most of the time.

And while she wasn't qualified as a psychiatrist – just a general practitioner – she had, in fact, done some neuro-psych studies in District Thirteen while it housed the traumatized hijack patient Peeta Mellark. She'd liked the kid, who _was_ for all his experiences still a kid, and sometimes got the chance to just come sit with him. She'd tell him about her day. They'd play card games or "Guess what I'm drawing?" on whatever scrap paper she could find with any blank space on it, together.

Peeta Mellark had survived nearly _ten _months past his release from the hijacking program. Part of that period of time he'd been in restraints. Part of that time he'd been in the burn trauma unit, unrestrained but injured. But part of that time he's been in the presence of the person who could trigger his mental-emotional instability, and both of them are still alive. Lida has great hopes that he'll reach a point of emotional balance, with only the occasional outburst.

He'd only been to her office a handful of times. Sometimes to just chat about the rebuilt bakery or how clear the air was now that the mines were closed, or to ask about her husband. He didn't volunteer much about his relationship with Katniss, but she had seen the glow in his eyes so she knew things were generally good. He'd also been to the clinic once or twice to pick up some prescriptions that were supposed to damp down mood swings, sent directly from a Capitol physician. Either they were working, or... well. They _had _been working. Lida figured that a serious flashback was due to happen at some point, whether the mood swings were damped or not. Nobody comes out of that kind of hell and is just fine afterward. And of course he'd been there with Katniss once, fighting off an episode, and he'd told her about the hallucinations.

Lida loves living in Twelve. Technically, she might still be a District Thirteen army doctor, but she's hoping she won't have to go back there. Thirteen had been a refuge from the wilds outside Six, and a wonderland of education, but she actually hated living there. Underground, no sky, no green, no birds, no holidays, terrible food, gray clothes, boring boring boring. Having grown up a child of her father, who hated authority of any kind and thwarted it all he could before he went a step too far, she had no love for authority for its own sake. Only when it made sense did she not mind following it. Thirteen's rules were strict, but they generally made sense.

Here in Twelve, though, she feels at home. The local accent is a little different, and the sun rises on the wrong side of the mountains, and hardly anything is functional yet, but it's good here. And it's going to be better, she can tell.

When Haymitch Abernathy had called her pager, she'd thrown off her blanket and thrown on her clothes, immediately grabbing the gray bag she privately called the Mental Kit before jumping into her little truck. She was grateful for it as always; it had a long covered bed in the back where an injured patient could ride if necessary, and it made covering the distances in the district in a short timeframe easy.

The Mental Kit holds restraints, a bite guard, and several syringes containing varying degrees of sedative and antipsychotic drugs. She plans to see just how bad things are before she decides which to use; the strongest thing in her arsenal is a syringe with a quantity of a drug carefully calculated to make a patient of Peeta Mellark's general size and weight unconscious within about thirty seconds, and keep him under for about three to four hours. She'd just have to hope that he wasn't violent enough to get his hands on her neck before she could shoot him full of that.

She hopes he isn't violent, period. She is still superstitious enough to pray, and she keeps it up all the way to the Village. _Let it not be bad. Let Abernathy not be totally drunk. Oh God, let it not be bad. Let me help_. _Poor kid._

Clutching the Mental Kit, she runs now to Abernathy's door and pounds on it. "It's Dr. Powers!" Haymitch opens it, looking the worse for drink but not beyond helping her tackle Peeta if need be. "Come on, let's go get him settled. Don't let her come," she says, nodding toward Katniss, who is slumped on the couch under a blanket, clutching herself as if she were freezing.

"No," Haymitch agrees, and closes the door behind them. He'd actually put on shoes, Lida notices. She opens the Kit as they near the Mellark house, which has lights on in several rooms, and pulls out the heavy-duty tranq syringe.

They can hear a sort of irregular thumping noise coming from inside, interspersed with crashing, and everything layered with sobbing and cries of what sounded like pain and frustration. _Let it not be bad_, Lida prays once more, hopelessly, and opens the door, syringe in hand .

It _is_ bad, but not as bad as she'd feared. The crashing seems to be from Peeta's tossing things around in the kitchen, apparently looking for something. His frustrated cries resolve from mere noise into a persistent wail of words she can't decipher. Haymitch, heading into the kitchen before Lida can stop him, trips over a largish wooden box on the floor, and she recognizes its thump as the one you could hear outside.

That box. "Haymitch!" she hisses. "What's in that box?"

He stops just outside the kitchen, where the sobs and crashing continues. (_Metal cake pans hitting the floor_, her brain deciphers. _And a whole slew of cooking utensils._) "Kitchen knives, the sharp ones," he says. And immediately plunges into the kitchen, Lida leaping across the room to follow him.

Peeta, momentarily winded, is leaning on the kitchen table, gasping with sobs. Lida does a quick visual check for obvious injury and sees none. He's lurching around without his prosthesis, which probably accounts for a good half of the noise.

"Look here, boy," Haymitch growls, "what the hell are you trying to find?"

Peeta whirls on them so fast that Lida automatically raises the syringe, balancing on the balls of her feet. But he doesn't attack; he stands there sobbing something in a tone of desperation, and it sounds like he's pleading for help.

"Tell me again," Haymitch says calmly.

This time his voice is clearer, but no less desperate. "The key, the _key!_ I need the key to the knife box!"

"You know I can't let you have the knives," Haymitch tells him, and steps a little closer. Lida steps closer too. " Dr. Powers is here to check on you. What were you planning to do with the knives?"

"_Kill myself,_" Peeta snarls. His voice sounds as if he'd already swallowed one of the knives, jagged and hoarse. "I'm too evil to live!" He takes a deep breath and stands up straight. "I'm a mutt. Snow turned me into a mutt, I hurt the people I love. I'm _evil_, I hurt her!"

"No, boy. She's fine," Haymitch says, and Peeta explodes into violence. He picks up a kitchen chair and throws it at the wall, crying out in anguish, and then seized a glass bowl off the table and hurls it across the kitchen into the stone sink, where it shatters. Even off-balance, with only one leg, he is capable of destruction – and at the same time, Lida notices, he isn't attacking any person.

Lida hasn't seen him like this wild since the hospital in Thirteen. Time to do something. She uses her Bossy Nurse voice, figuring that anyone who'd grown up with a woman like Mrs. Mellark for a mother ought to respond to it. "_Peeta!_ Stop that _right now! _You sit down here in _this chair_," she points to another chair at the table, "and _stop throwing things_. You're going to _hurt someone_."

Peeta, shocked into stillness, gasps.

"I said _now_." Lida keeps pointing to the chair. Peeta, suddenly looking like an overgrown toddler, collapses into it, wide-eyed and panting. "_Good_," she tells him, and moves closer to the chair. She no longer thinks she'll need the heavy-duty tranq, and she sets it on the table, out of his reach. She grips his upper arms. "Now, listen: I'm going to give you a mild sedative to help you calm down. And once you feel more like yourself, we'll talk. Right now you need to know that Katniss" - he flinches – "is just fine. She told me so herself. And you look pretty angry and upset, so clearly something happened, but you are going to be fine, too. _Trust_ me."

He slumps in the chair, looking lost and almost small, but his hands and arms are twitchy, and his dilated pupils tell her he's not calm. He's not fighting, but he's still riding terrifying doses of adrenaline in his bloodstream. "Help me," he says, his voice rough. Haymitch brings Lida the Mental Kit, and she opens it to choose an empty syringe and a judicious dose of sedative. She gives him the shot, and he sighs in the anticipation of relief. "Okay, sweetie. You can go to sleep if you want, or just rest. Don't worry about anything right now. We'll be with you." Within three minutes, his eyes are drooping closed.

Lida and Haymitch get him into the big armchair in the living room, sitting up, head propped against the side, before he passes out completely. Lida feels stupid doing it, but she uses the softer restraints to anchor his arms to his side. If he really wants to, he'll be able to get his arms loose – these soft padded ties are not like handcuffs or the restraints you use on a hospital bed, or the barbarous thing called a straitjacket – but he'll have to really work at it. If he's violent and struggling with the restraints, she'll use those few seconds to get another syringe into him, but she doubts she'll need to.

Haymitch covers him with a blanket from the closet, which surprises her until she gets a look at Haymitch's face. So then she can do what she wants to do, which is to pull up a stool and sit next to the chair, lifting the blanket just enough so she can hold Peeta's hand. Haymitch sits on the floor. "I need a drink. How long's he likely to be out?"

"I don't know. I only gave him a sedative, and a mild one. He must have _wanted_ to be out."

"Hmm. And how did you know to pull out the big bad mama voice?"

Lida laughs a little under her breath. "Saw his actual mama interviewed for the Games a couple of times. She seemed like a right bitch. I figured it would work." Haymitch shoots her a sharp look, eyebrows raised, and grunts.

They sit in silence for a good ten minutes, during which Lida holds Peeta's limp hand and prays some more. Then she remembers the patient she hasn't seen yet. "Do you think you'd better check on Katniss?"

"Might better, yeah," Haymitch says, and painfully levers himself up off the floor. He turns most of the lights off on his way out, leaving the kitchen light on and the one over the door.

Lida sits and holds Peeta's hand, and because it's the middle of the night, and she's so tired after the release of tension, and because she doesn't think he's a threat to her anyway, she puts her head on the arm of the chair and just lets herself drift. This boy. He reminds her so much of Dill sometimes... It's the eyes, probably. The Powers eyes are a different blue: pale as spring water, downright eerie compared to Peeta's soft cornflower blue irises. It's only the lost look in the eyes that's the same. She hasn't seen Dill in, goodness, fourteen years. No, fifteen. That's right, she'll be thirty-three this year. He's probably dead. If he's alive, he's living out in the deep woods outside Six, scrounging a living off rats and acorns. He'd be thirty-five. _If _he's alive, Lida thinks.

At other times, Peeta reminds her not of her silent, brain-damaged brother, but of the baby she'd given birth to twenty years ago, the one who'd only lived nine hours. The one she had begged God to let her not have, because girls aren't meant to be pregnant three months after their first menstrual period. Little girls aren't supposed to be forced open in that way, violated and impregnated, and she'd been so angry and ashamed about the whole thing that the baby just seemed like the Last Straw of All The Evil in the world, wrapped up in one lump in her belly. Right up to the point when she went into labor, she was still pleading with God to make her not be pregnant.

She hadn't been able to take care of herself well, but that was because they were all on the brink of starvation: Daddy shot dead, Dill's brain not right from the gun butt to the head. Mama and Rashel trying to keep the supply of Daddy's secret recipe going for under-the-counter sales, but not good at it and sometimes having to go in the back room with strange men, just to get a few coins.

But when the baby came, after two days of her constant screaming labor, he wasn't evil. He was so tiny and perfect, and so trusting, she hadn't wanted to let him go. Asleep in her arms, he'd held her finger. Awake, he looked at her all the time, cloudy blue eyes intent on her face, so full of his own unconscious goodness that he glowed with it. She'd ignored the pain in her torn lower parts, ignored her hunger and need for sleep, and held him and talked to him in the softest voice. "Baby," she'd whispered. "Baby, my baby." She had had no thoughts at all of the man who'd made her pregnant.

She'd had no milk, nor even any colostrum. And he'd not taken a bottle of goat milk her mother had spent money they didn't have on, either. Refused it. Went on staring at her, at Lida, his _mother_, looking right into her, until his eyes closed and he didn't open them again.

She'd never named him. But in her heart, she calls him River.

Haymitch comes back, sits down again. She can smell that he's had one drink, at least, but isn't plastered. Lida opens her eyes with the question in them. "She's asleep. Worn completely out," he says. "Cried herself to sleep, looks like." Lida nods. Haymitch gestures toward Peeta. "Hand-holding doesn't seem very professional, _Doctor_ Powers."

"It isn't," Lida says quietly. "It's just... sometimes I pretend to myself that he's my son."

Haymitch stares at her, and takes a deep breath. "I know." He looks up at the ceiling, and she can see him blinking in the dim light. "I feel like they're both mine. Not that I'm _father_ material or anything, don't get the wrong idea."

Lida nods again. She puts her head back down and closes her eyes. She drifts, not sleeping.

Some time later she feels Peeta wake. Not _wake_, really: there's a change in the quality of his breathing, a liveliness in the hand she's still holding. She lifts her head, and she's looking up at him when his eyes open, glazed from the sedative and the sleep, full of pain but sane. She's been with River so long tonight that she doesn't think, just says whatever falls out of her mouth. Which turns out to be, "Hi, baby. Feeling better?"

She feels Haymitch's gaze on her but doesn't look at him. Peeta gives her a tiny nod. He's still confused, they can see. And then Haymitch crouches down near the chair and takes Peeta's other hand, and in the softest voice she's ever heard out of him, tells him, "You did good, boy. You stayed alive. You kept her safe. You did good."

Peeta makes a breathy sound that might be a snort of ironic laughter in someone who hasn't spent a lot of the night screaming. He blinks, licks his lips. "Water?" Lida asks. He nods, and Haymitch brings in a glassful, holding it so Peeta can sip. He drinks, pushing himself upright as best he can with one foot. A bead of water spills down his chin, and then two tears spill down his face right after. Then a flood of them. Lida wipes his face dry with the handkerchief from her pocket.

"...I didn't hurt her?" he whispers. This is the pain in his eyes, Lida realizes.

"_No_. She's fine," Haymitch says. He tousles Peeta's hair, an act that seems to surprise Peeta. "A little shook up, but fine. She fell asleep on the couch at my place. She was worried sick about you and kind of wiped out from all the tension. You want to see her?" but Peeta shakes his head, and more tears flow. Lida wipes them again.

"Let's get these off you, honey," Lida says of the restraints. She loosens them. Peeta sits completely still while she runs through the neurological field exam ("Follow my finger with your eyes,") with him. He passes. "You're doing just fine. You can get up whenever you want to, we'll go get your leg for you. You can eat if you want. I'll make you some eggs or something. Do you want to go to bed? Do you want some more water? What's worrying you most right now?" Lida asks him.

There's a pause in which he gives her this incredulous look. Then he rasps out, "You two are like _the_ weirdest adoptive parents ever," and Haymitch falls over laughing. Lida does not laugh. River is still right behind her eyelids.

Haymitch fetches Peeta's leg from upstairs, puts it on him, and steadies him on the way to the toilet. Lida straightens up the kitchen, stacking pots, bowls, cake pans and big mixing spoons on the counter, and clearing away the broken glass bowl in the sink before someone gets hurt. Then she cooks eggs with cheese, but Peeta can't eat them – can hardly swallow anything, really. So she makes him drink warm mint tea with honey, and Haymitch eats the eggs.

Peeta is still sitting at the table, looking like death's leftovers, forcing the tea down one tiny sip at a time, when Lida sits down next to him. "You don't have to talk," she says to him. "Not necessarily to me. Or Haymitch. Or to Katniss, until you're ready." He winces, and the tears pour down again. Lida hands him the dishtowel. "But you do need to talk to your psychiatrist in the Capitol. You call him first thing tomorrow. _No excuses_."

"Dr. Aurelius," he says. His voice is rough as sandpaper.

Lida frowns. "I thought he was treating Katniss?" Peeta nods. "That seems... unorthodox. Conflict of interest, actually, not very professional."

Haymitch snorts, and Peeta looks at him questioningly.

"That was for me," Lida explains to Peeta. "Because I was holding your hand earlier. That's not … doctors aren't supposed to be personal like that."

"I liked it. It was comforting," Peeta says in that sandpapery voice. "I felt safe."

Haymitch shakes his head, but he's smiling his dark cynical smile. "I take it back, then."

"Besides," Peeta goes on, "I think Dr. Aurelius pretty much does what he wants."

"He must," Lida agrees. She can see out the kitchen window that dawn is approaching. She needs sleep: she's got clinic hours from eight to four tomorrow. Of course, it already is tomorrow. She's quiet a moment, crossing gazes with Haymitch, and then she asks again. "Do you want to see Katniss?" Peeta shakes his head, looking down.

"She'll want to see you," Haymitch says bluntly. "She's worried. We made her stay at my house."

"_No_," Peeta says fiercely, and his voice breaks. He wipes his face with the towel. "She should hate me. I'm dangerous."

Haymitch gets up. "Thanks for the eggs. I'm going to go wake up the huntress and tell her you're okay. I'm going to send her over here for lunch, too."

Peeta shakes his head, the tears still pouring. Lida's had one eye on him the whole time, and now she says _sotto voce_ to Haymitch, "Maybe not today."

"I'm disappointed," Haymitch says. "I thought you were brave, boy."

Before anyone can say anything else, the growing dawn is suddenly split by screams. Clearly it's Katniss screaming, but by the time any of them make it to the window to see, she's just a blur in a blue robe, bursting out of Haymitch's house, running across the lawn, and slamming the door of her own house behind her. The screams change to sobs.

"Let me go check on that," Haymitch says, and he goes out. Lida looks at Peeta.

"I just want to die," Peeta whispers, head in his hands. "I failed her. I_ hurt_ her. Please just let me die."


	27. Chapter 27: Letters

**A/N: Some terrible language here, but it's a chapter with no actual sex in it. (Sorry.) Here's the whole pile of boulders crashing down, Peeta's realization of having hit rock bottom.**

**I must explain that I have shamelessly lifted at least one element from silvercistern's wonderful Johanna-and-Gale-focused story, Le Couperet et Le Collet ("The Axe and the Snare," very clever title.) GO READ. I INSIST. YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY.**

**I must also explain that I think "the Capitol," as the name of the premier city of the country known as Panem, would have remained "the Capitol" even while the ruling body and the name of the country changed. I also think that to reflect the attempt at a republic-style democratic government, each of the districts will eventually choose a name to replace the number, though this hasn't happened yet. Will the new government be quickly corrupted? Will democracy fail? I don't know yet. I'm not so naïve as to think that they manage to transition seamlessly to a style of government not dependent on a strong leader, especially when the person in charge has a military background.**

**I make no claim to own THG.**

Chapter 27: Letters

_Peeta_

"What _happened_?" Haymitch asks me, his eyes shrewd and hooded. He's glaring across the table at me. "I thought you two were – " he breaks off. Inhales sharply. Pours another glass of wine and downs it all at once. "I'm not gonna like this one, am I?"

"Oh, God," I say, putting my face into my hands.

"Damn, boy," Haymitch says. "This is the only alcohol you've got in this house? Good thing I've got some decent stuff stashed away. And no, you cannot have any. Now tell me."

I explain about the conditioning with the blue sparkly Sex-Mutt-Katniss film. The telling makes me miserable, and I barely get through it, but I look up to see him nodding grimly.

"Ah, so they manipulated a porno and put her face in it. I suppose I should have thought of that. I suppose I _would_ have thought of it, if my plan had been to screw up your mind as much as possible."

"Manipulated a _what?_"

He snorts. "Never mind. Anyway, I should have expected that. I didn't. So you had sex, and then your brain turned it into blue sparkly kink, and you lashed out?"

I shrug. The only way this could be more miserable is that I could be explaining it to Katniss. I had diligently placed a call to Dr. Aurelius' office earlier this morning, dreading the conversation, only to find that he was out for the day and would have to get back to me tomorrow. I have to wait. Which is _horrible_. It's like hearing them come for Johanna in her cell and knowing I'm next, whenever they've finished with her. Not only was I torn between wanting them to finish quickly and leave her in peace, and wanting them to wait as long as possible before coming to get me, but then I was also tormented by guilt over the selfish wish that it would take them longer than usual with her, no matter how excruciating it was for her, no matter how much she screamed, just so I got a few extra minutes before it was my turn.

I don't want to explain this to Katniss, no matter what Dr. Powers says, and no matter what Dr. Aurelius will surely say. I'll probably have to, for her own safety. But I _don't want to_.

"Is this the first time it's happened?" Haymitch is asking me, apparently not for the first time because he's getting annoyed. "That you've had a post-sex hallucination?"

"Well... I had to fight off a flashback once. But yes, first hallucination. Haymitch, it hasn't been all that long since we started actually – _you_ know."

"Shagging each other's brains out?" He cackles and pours another slug into his glass, although he hasn't quite finished what was in there before.

Well, I wouldn't have put it that way. But I nod. I am utterly miserable. I don't want to be here. I don't want to talk about it.

"So what was different about this time? Besides that letter from the Capitol? And the one from _Assistant_ _Defense Minister Gale Hawthorne_?" He says the last few words in that sarcastic quoting sort of voice that lets me know what he thinks of Gale's new job.

"I didn't tell her about them," I confess.

"No, you just let 'em go to work on screwing up _your_ brain, didn't you?" He shakes his head. "Idiot. What else?"

I'm going to have to say. He's not going to stop asking until he knows exactly what happened. "And we sort of went over the edge last night, too. In bed, I mean." It occurs to me now that Katniss, whose sexual tastes seem to be considerably more conservative than my own, had noted my emotional disturbance and was trying to please me, or distract me, last night.

"Over the edge how?"

I'm hesitant to answer. I grit my teeth. And then I tell him, as matter-of-factly as I can manage, exactly how, although it leaves me crimson with embarrassment (and perhaps with just a bit of remembered excitement).

Haymitch stares at me, and I can feel myself blushing even further. Any minute now he's going to tell me how appalled he is that I could ever put the love of my life through that kind of treatment.

He starts out shaking his head, repeating the phrases I'd mentioned, and then he laughs. Really hard. Really long. It annoys me, particularly because I have already ruined my life with this, and he doesn't _get it_. I get up and stomp toward the door. "Shut up, Haymitch," I growl. "I'm not proud of it."

Through guffaws, he calls me back. "No, no, boy, don't run off. Are you actually telling me that you think you deserve a membership to The Diamond Awl for having got up to that?"

The Diamond Awl is some kind of kinky-sex club in the Capitol; Johanna told me about it once. She'd hated it, and refused to give any details of what precisely goes on there – or why she was there in the first place. Of course I've never been there, would never go. I shrug again.

"Well, boy, I hate to disappoint you." Haymitch looks at me as soberly as he can manage at this time of morning, when he's been up all night and would clearly like nothing better than to sleep. "None of that is even remotely kinky. It's normal. What you two babes in the wood were doing is pretty much plain – well, okay,not _exactly_ plain-vanilla sex. More like plain-vanilla with a drizzle of caramel sauce. Maybe a sprinkle of chocolate chips. That's all warm and fuzzy stuff. No kink."

_Oh yeah?_ Warm and fuzzy? Damn, what kind of festivities _do_ they hold in the Diamond Awl?

Never mind, I don't want to know. I do _not_. I feel queasy.

And at the same time, in that inimitable abrasive Haymitch way, he's made me feel marginally better. If that isn't kinky, then maybe she can forgive me.

No, she can't. I just took her without her permission. You could even say I raped her. I hurt her, in that most intimate way possible. _Oh god oh god oh god, how can she forgive me after that?_

_How can I forgive myself?_

"What'd you do with your letter?" Haymitch asks.

"Study. Top right desk drawer." I shiver a little.

Haymitch goes into the study, stumbling just a little. My stomach growls, but the thought of food nauseates me. I drink the small amount of mint tea remaining in my cup. It's cold and too sweet; Dr. Lida must have put honey in it. Haymitch comes back, tossing the envelope onto the kitchen table and sitting heavily in his chair. "Okay. Let's see if this is the same one Katniss got."

"Why were you reading her mail, anyway?" I ask as rudely as I dare.

He looks up at me, and the shrewd expression in his eyes is in sharp contrast to his exhaustion. His eyes are bloodshot and pouchy, but I'm reminded that unless he's blind drunk Haymitch always knows what he's doing. "I try to keep on top of things. As best I can, anyway. I knew something like this was coming. 'Final Hunger Games'? Of course people are going to start remembering the Victors. And I don't know whether she can handle this or not."

He scrubs his hand through his hair, and I see a few glints of silver in the dark mop. He's only – what, forty-three? Forty-three. People age early in the Seam, or they used to, anyway. And he's been abusing alcohol for long enough, certainly, to show signs of aging. But somehow despite all the recent hell in my mind, something about those few gray hairs just squeezes my heart. Then he ruins it by glaring at me. "I don't even know whether _you_ can handle this or not, boy."

He doesn't read the letter out loud, but I remember every word of it, in official typeface on official letterhead with "Republic of Panem" and the new governmental seal at the top:

"Mr. Peeta Mellark

Victor's Village, Number 8

District Twelve

Dear Mr. Mellark:

I hope that this letter finds you well. We've been hearing encouraging reports of improvements and reconstruction in your District, and I trust that the governmental food assistance program has been very helpful in resettling the area. The new Republic needs all its citizens, and insofar as we who are involved in running the country can help in providing for citizens' basic needs, we intend to do that.

As you may be aware, the time for the final Hunger Games is fast approaching. The votes cast for this event among the surviving Victors were legal and this decision to hold the Games with participants drawn from citizens between the ages of twelve and eighteen, related to key political and military figures of the prior governmental entity centered in the Capitol, has been codified. The Games will take place eighteen days from today's date.

The members of the President's Cabinet have decided that it would be best if the surviving Victors of prior Games were to be present in the Capitol for this year's Games. Your presence will not be compelled, but you are reminded that, having sworn an oath in support of the new government, your country expects that you will serve in this manner.

You will not be expected to mentor or to interact with tributes, sponsors, or Gamemakers in any way. There are other changes in regards to the Games, but these will be discussed at a meeting of former Victors and certain Cabinet members on the _th of July. You must arrive in the Capitol by the prior day, and you will be released from service at the conclusion of events surrounding the final Hunger Games.

You will be housed securely and, I hope, comfortably in rooms at the President's Residence. Travel will either be via hovercraft or your regular District-to-Capitol train, by your choice. Please indicate your chosen method and date of travel on the enclosed card and return it by mail as soon as possible.

Upon your arrival at the Capitol, you will be met by a government representative and escorted to the Residence, and from thence to all events where your presence is required. Your needs, from housing to food to personal care, will be addressed by Residence staff. Business or military dress will be the norm at most of your meetings, but there will also be several formal-dress events. Appropriate clothing will be provided for you if you wish.

I look forward to hearing from you, and even more to seeing you. I'm certain that you join me in your support of the Republic of Panem.

Sincerely,

President Karen Paylor"

Haymitch reads this thinly-veiled order through and then raises his eyes to me. "This, frankly, scares the shit out of me."

This being the first time I've ever heard Haymitch say such a thing – though I'm sure he's thought something like it often enough since he became our mentor – I'm scared too. It was bad enough yesterday, reading that through and getting fixated on the idea that I was going to a) have to return to the Capitol and b) witness another Hunger Games. But now I'm worried. The language in this letter is not exactly warm and friendly. It's all "it has been decided" and "not compelled" and "escorted to all events" and "expects that you serve."

"Fuck," Haymitch says, and rubs his forehead.

"What, is mine worse than hers?"

"No, it's pretty similar. And that's what frightens me. I _expected_ her summons to be brusque and warning in tone. I expected mine to be the same since I am guardian to the person who, after all, killed the prior president." He looks straight at me. "But you've never been in any trouble at all, and this woman talks to you like you've been a bad boy."

"Did you meet Paylor?" I ask. Katniss has told me about meeting her during the war.

"Once. Before I left to escort Miss Deadeye over there back home after her trial. Seems like an honorable person, but power does strange things to people. I don't know that Paylor had any love for Coin, but I'm quite sure she doesn't want to encourage any idea that presidents should be assassinated. And, you know, Paylor wasn't from Thirteen. She doesn't have that gratitude toward you for warning Thirteen about the bombs. She probably remembers your first post-capture interview with Flickerman, where you called for a cease-fire."

"You know why I did that."

"I know. Focused on that girl and her safety, as always. But Peeta – " he never calls me by my name unless he's communicating something vital – "I suspect that the sooner and more clear you make your support of the new government, the better it will be for you."

"Yeah, I _get it_. I'm not that dumb." He's right, I'll do anything to keep Katniss safe. In this case, with the way that we depend on each other, that might mean saying anything I'm told to say, to keep them from going after her. "Do you trust them? Because I don't."

Haymitch is silent a moment, his gaze level and serious. "No. But I don't distrust them, either. They seem to be making a real effort to do things the right way. I just don't know who's going to get greedy, and when, and what will happen in the official channels when eventually somebody gets power-grabby."

"So her letter is just as... _authoritative_ in tone?"

"It's curt. Most of it is the same, except that hers says, lessee, something like, 'You are hereby ordered to present yourself in the company of your mentor at the Capitol for a psychiatric examination. If you are deemed able to participate, you are hereby reminded that you swore an oath, yada yada...' Mine is just alike, bar the pronouns. You know,_ I'm_ supposed to present _her_, yada yada." He chuckles darkly. "Except that I don't think anybody actually made sure she swore the oath. No, we just popped her onto a hovercraft and got her the hell outta there, ASAP. I don't think she even knew the difference between night and day at that point –"

He's talking too much. Trying to distract me or something. "'Present yourself for psychiatric examination,'" I quote in horror. My blood feels like icewater in my veins, and the top of my head grows cold. If there were anything on the table ready to hand, I'd throw it. "_Bloody fucking hell_."

He sighs. "I know."

"If it's anybody other than Aurelius, they'll probably want to punish her."

"I know."

"If they think she's a threat, they could stick her in a cell for a thousand years, Haymitch."

"I know."

"Or execute her for murder. Oh God." I bend over and put my head between my knees. Not _possible_. This is _not happening_. It's supposed to be _over_. We're supposed to be safe. Haymitch and Katniss and me, we're supposed to be _safe_.

And _Johanna_. And _Annie! _ Annie's baby. Once we're there, they are in a position to crush every single one of us.

"Did you read Hawthorne's letter?" Haymitch asks.

"_No_," I said. "Did _you?_" It was addressed to her. And, yeah, I was scared too shitless to steam it open and then seal it up again. I cannot bear the thought that she'll leave me for him.

Though I admit that she would be safer with him, Mr. Big Shot Effing Military Dude. Who's never _tried to kill her_.

The phone rings. I jump. I'm about to heave myself out of the chair to go answer it, but Haymitch is three steps down the hall before I can stand up. I can hear him talking quietly, and then he's back. "She wants to talk to you."


	28. Chapter 28: The Risk

A/N: This is a continuation of Ch. 27's scene. It was getting too long.

Chapter 28: The Risk

_Peeta_

Haymitch stomps back into the kitchen after answering the phone. "She wants to talk to you."

_Oh god._ "I can't." I have to protect her.

He puts his hands on the table and leans forward into my face. "Yes, you can. Boy, she's going crazy over there at her house. Worried sick about you. We do _not _need her to go off into one of her week-long blue moods with this shit hanging over us, do you understand me? If you gotta hold your balls in one hand to make sure you still have 'em, you gather up your manhood and go _talk to that girl_. Now!"

I stare at him. "There's no need to be vulgar, Haymitch."

"There's every need for you to go pick up the fucking phone, boy." He's not backing down. I know Katniss. She is not going to like what I have to say to her, not one bit, so the sooner I get started, the better.

I close the study door behind me, and lock it. I need privacy. The phone is cold to the touch. "Hello?"

"Please tell me you're okay," she says, her voice wavery.

"Katniss?"

"What?"

"You don't sound like you."

"You don't either," she says, and she sounds more sure of herself now. "You're very hoarse. You screamed a lot last night."

Time to face it. "About last night... I'm so, so sorry –"

She interrupts me. "Shut up. Will you just shut up and stop apologizing all the damn time? That's enough of that. I _know_ you didn't mean to. I _know_ you're sorry. I just want you to be okay. Because I'm fine. You didn't hurt me. I'm fine." I can't speak. "Are you okay?"

"Uh-huh," is all I can get out. I'm going to bawl like a baby if I'm not careful. She can't be fine, not after what I did.

"Good. Dr. Lida took care of you?"

"Yes." _And it was a little weird_, I want to tell her. But my voice is so unsteady that I don't try.

"When can I come home?" she asks, and by the time she gets to the last word, her voice breaks.

It's so strange to just hear her voice and not see her. I can't read her at all over a phone line. We've hardly ever talked on the phone, and it's not like us at all. I take a deep breath.

"Please don't," I say, and it's only then that I realize she's used the word _home_ to refer to my house. The pain of this is truly awful, a red-hot skewer in the center of my chest. It burns. She's silent. I steel myself with the mental pictures that have tortured me all night: Katniss broken, bleeding, damaged. All my fault.

"Please, please don't. Because I love you down to the tiniest part of my being. But if you stay with me, sooner or later I am _going to_ _hurt you_. Even though I'd rather die than do it, I'm going to do it anyway, without meaning to, and then I really will die. I will end myself rather than ever hurt you again. But you can't stay here while I'm here."

She says nothing. I know this hurts her. I know she wants to heal me, to make me better. But I've finally realized this: she can't. Even this love, as enormous and sweet and consuming as it is, cannot heal me. It can't fix my fucked-up head. If anything, I am worse now than I was before I knew she loved me. And if I want her to go on living, I have to stay away from her.

It cannot be this way, that I hurt her and she forgives me, and then I hurt her again and she forgives me again. That is abusive. Nobody knows better than I do that people are not supposed to behave like that to the ones they love.

"Katniss?"

She says nothing. I just sit there, breathing, trying not to cry. And then I have another try. "Katniss, I'm sorry. I still love you. I will always love you. I just can't... it's not safe for you to be with me."

She still says nothing. "Katniss?" This hurts so bad. "Look, if I have problems when we're _not_ sleeping together and I still have them when we _are_ – it's just, if you... if I hurt you again, I can't live with myself."

But nothing. And I don't understand why until I hear her running feet outside the front of the house. She's banging on the front door and shrieking, and Haymitch opens the door before I can yell from the study for him not to do it. The pounding on the study door starts.

"Peeta, damn it, let me in!" she shouts. I hang up the phone. I'm shaking. She cannot come in here.

Thud thud. "OW!"

I hear Haymitch snort. He must be outside the study too. "Sweetheart, it is stupid to kick the door with bare feet."

"Shut up!" she howls at him. "I mean it, Peeta, open this door right now! Open it! Or I'll use Thom's axe, I swear!"

I go and stand at the door. I put my hand on it, feeling all the passion of my Katniss on the other side of it. And although I know I _can't _give in to the temptation to say, "You're right, everything's fine, we love each other, you've forgiven me and it'll never happen again," I want to. I want to so badly that I feel ripped in two. "Go away, sweetheart," I say, as tenderly as possible through an inch of solid oak door.

I love her, I love her, and I cannot endanger her life any more.

She pounds on the door again, and it sounds like she's doing it with something that's definitely not her hand. "Peeta, open this fucking door right this second or I will fucking break it down!" She is frantic. (I've never heard her use that word before. I've tried not to use it in her hearing. Haymitch, of course, has no such compunction.)

"Don't do that, love," I tell her.

"Boy, just open the damn door," Haymitch says wearily. "I can't strategize this visit with the two of you at loggerheads. Can't do it. And I need a damn drink." There's another thunk at the door, and then he says, "Sweetheart, you are delusional. You cannot break down the door with Thom's axe. Johanna Mason you are most definitely not."

"I have to!" she shrieks, and then she must put her face right up against the door hinges because her voice gets even louder. "Peeta, I can't take this! If you are in there hurting yourself I am going to fucking_ kill _you!" She goes back to pounding on the door with what I'm hoping is the flat of the axehead.

This has gone way farther than I ever thought it would go. I think I can manage to open the door and explain calmly to her that it's for her own safety, though it's more painful than having my skin burnt off, and I should know. But before I can unlock it, Haymitch says, "_Give_ me that, you idiot," and there's a cry of frustration from Katniss and a dull thud. "Open the door, boy," he says, and there's a plea in his voice. "I _need _you, goddammit, don't you dare do this, and she doesn't even _know _yet."

He means the Capitol. The Games. And he's right, he needs me. How he's going to keep the two of us apart and her safe, I don't know.

I open the door. I just barely have time to see Haymitch leaning on the handle of an axe, breathing hard and glaring at me, before Katniss flies squarely into my chest and almost knocks me over.

I hold her, and we both weep a thunderstorm of tears. I lose my balance and stumble backward so that I wind up sitting on the edge of the desk, pulling her close as she completely soaks my shirt front with her crying. I stop crying first – yeah, unusual for us – and try to comfort her.

Haymitch stumps in and sits on the leather two-person couch. He catches my eye, and points at me. "Look, I know you two are gonna want to go have wild make-up sex, but you have to put it off for awhile. We have serious business here. And I'm fucking exhausted. And I've drunk all your wine, and it's only a matter of time before I go to sleep. So wind it up, okay?" He makes a circular motion with his hand, and I roll my eyes.

I pat her and pull back a little. She seems to be slowing down. "Hey. Hey, it's okay. Don't cry."

"You were going to hurt yourself," she whispers fiercely, hiccuping.

"No."

"You _said_." She punches my bicep, hard.

"I said that _if_ I hurt you again I would. We can't let that happen." I am going to

have to explain it to her more than once, ease her into the idea. She thinks she's immortal. "Shhh, hush, baby, it's okay."

"You didn't hurt me," she practically yells into my face. "How could you think you would hurt me?"

"I did, though. You said it hurt." I have a clear memory of her telling me to stop, a strange sort of merged image of her real face and the blue Sex-Mutt one, and she was in pain. I know she was. But I couldn't stop, I was too close and it was too much like the freaky painful thing in the video...

"You did _not._ Okay, so it was mildly painful for the three minutes that it took, but the first time was worse than that, you know." She pokes me in the chest. "Don't you _dare _tell me that ever again, that you'll end yourself. You scared me to death, damn you!"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." I stroke her hair, which is loose – and wet, where I cried into it.

"You're just scared you'll hurt me, anyway," she says, poking me in the chest again. "Admit it! You're just _afraid _you will. You haven't hurt me at all, not since you had jacker venom in you."

"Well, and isn't that something to be afraid of?"

She lets go of me and backs up a step. "I'm _not _afraid of you!" she yells. "I know you, and you'd rather die than hurt me, so I'm not afraid! You're the chicken here. _You're_ the one who won't take a chance on _me! _ It's my life, Peeta, and I am telling you I'm not going! You can't make me! Stop being so scared all the time!"

Well, this is unfair.

"And why is it that you won't have my babies, Katniss?" I shoot my own bullet straight.

She takes a step back as if she's really been shot. Her jaw drops. "That's completely different," she protests, but weakly.

"No, it isn't. It's the same thing, isn't it? I'm afraid that I can't protect the person I love best in the world." I look into her eyes. "It is exactly the same. Exactly." We stare at each other for a minute.

I love this woman. And maybe I am wrong about deciding for her. I try to explain.

"So at least one of us has to change position here. The way I see it, either I win on the grounds of your safety and we never see each other again, or you win, and we try to keep loving each other and protecting each other." I can tell by her eyes that she's seeing the conundrum now. "But if you win and we keep loving each other because you've decided to take the risk, then you don't have an argument for not having children. If I can't decide that your risk is too great for you to love me, then you can't decide that the risk of loss is too great for us to have children. Do you see?"

We can't stop staring at each other. She's thinking, I'm waiting. And then her shoulders drop as she decides. She takes a deep breath, and her head comes up.

"Not now," she says. "Not yet. It's not safe yet. But someday, Peeta. I promise you that."

I nod, loving her so much I can't see straight. I _was_ wrong. I can't choose her risk for her. "That's all I can ask."

"_Well_," says the forgotten person in the room. "Now that _that's_ all settled, can you put off the inevitable naked reunion and get down to business?"

We turn to him in the same motion, taking each other's hands. "No," we say in unison.

"We'll talk after lunch," I add. "Sleep it off. We're going upstairs for awhile."

We hold hands all the way up the stairs and into our bedroom. And these are the sweetest kisses yet, complicated things that taste like risk and surrender and forgiveness.

"I love you," she whispers fiercely, and kisses the hollow of my neck as she tugs off my pajama pants. I take her face in my hands and tell her that I love her. How I love her, all the ways I love her, how much I love her, how long I've loved her and how long I'm going to love her (beyond death, if you really wanted to know).

She peels off her dress, a faded yellow thing she must have gotten out of her mother's closet, and she is naked underneath, and my hands tighten involuntarily on her waist as the heat rises up so fast between us. She falls back onto the bed, saying my name and pulling me on top of her, guiding me inside her. I nearly bite my lip in two, trying to hang on.

She's so ready, so slick, and this is the first time she's ever finished just with me inside her, no hands or tongue, and the second her head rolls back and I feel her clamp down, I'm just gone. Spiraling into the sky with no tether.

I'm drifting around among stars when she pokes me. "Hey. Wake up."

"I'm awake,"I try to say, but I guess I did fall asleep, because I can't even talk.

"Really, wake up," she says, and I make my eyes focus on her. "I need to know."

"Anything." I have no idea what I'm promising, except that she asked me for something so I said yes.

"Why did you stop me? When I shot Coin instead of Snow. When I was trying to get to my nightlock pill."

"Oh. That." There's only one answer, a very simple one. "I still loved you. I couldn't bear a world without you in it. Even if you weren't with me."

She blinks a little. "Well, but how did you know I was going to do it? _ I_ didn't know I was going to do it. I didn't even decide to, really – right that minute I figured out how she used Prim, how she was just like Snow, and I wanted her dead, and the next second she was. I didn't plan it."

I'm stunned, and trying to match this against the Katniss that I have always known. Volunteering for Prim. Coming to find me after the rule change in our first Games. The berries. The salute to Rue. Talking to that Capitol loyalist coming out of the Nut in District Two, when she got shot. Getting in the way of a whipstroke meant for Gale. Kissing me out of a flashback in the Capitol. No, I see she's right. None of her most significant actions were ever planned. She acted on impulse, without forethought.

And if she didn't know, how did I? How _had _I known that she was going to do something and that I must get there?

"I don't know," I tell her, shaking my head. "I just... you had that look you get when you're about to _do_ something. And I knew I had to get there in time. That's all." I remember something. "Haymitch told me before our first Games that I should just watch you and take my cues from you. React to whatever it was that you did. He said that would be the best way to support you. I guess he was right." I sit up. "Ugh, Haymitch. He's going to give me so much grief over this."

"What was he talking about, that I 'didn't even know'?" She sits up too.

I heave a sigh before I go get real clothes out of the dresser to put on. "I'll let him tell you."

**A/N: The news is that tomorrow I'm heading off on The Big College Tour with my husband and rising-high-school-senior daughter, and I probably will not be able to update for at least ten days. Might be longer. Hang in there and be patient, and I'll do what I can. Thanks for reading!**


	29. Chapter 29: Plans

**Chapter 29: Plans**

_Katniss_

I would like nothing better at the moment than to just collapse, exhausted, on our bed and sleep. The broken night and its emotional storms, followed by the ones of this morning, have left me feeling hollow and light-headed. And this episode of lovemaking was so_ fast_, so intense and so intensely _satisfying_, that I'd like to bask in it a little before I sleep.

But I know I can't. With Peeta's challenge to me about the risks we try to decide for other people, I've realized that there are very great risks still ahead.

I killed President Coin. I am not so safe here as Peeta had wanted me to be, and I have the uncomfortable feeling that he's forgotten my precarious political status, remembering me only as the Mockingjay who served as an icon for the Rebellion and filled his tortured nightmares.

There is a small glow in my heart that even when I had no mental space for him, he knew me well enough to stop me taking that suicide pill that Cinna had so thoughtfully provided me. Peeta _knew _me. He knows me. He loves me.

And although it twists my heart to realize how much I love him back and how vulnerable that makes me, I have to acknowledge it.

I doze while he showers. When he comes back in, I sit up in bed and watch him get dressed, memorizing the lines of his body and the way his hair sticks up, a dandelion puff of blond. My blood's still running all bubbly in my veins and I'm half inclined to entice him back to bed. I could do it. I could lie back on the pillows and start touching myself, say his name... that drives him _crazy_. Even so soon after, I'm sure he'd rise to the occasion again.

But he and Haymitch know something I don't know. And whatever it was that prompted his disastrous hallucinatory episode, it's still weighing on him. His face is grim.

"Peeta?" He looks at me, and lets his eyes run over my body where I'm still lounging post-coitally on the bed. He blinks, and I practically see his brain waver between worry and desire. "Can we come back to bed later?"

He smiles. "Definitely. But may I suggest you get dressed now? With underwear this time, too." He opens the drawer in his dresser that has become mine, and tosses me clean panties and a bra, then a pair of lightweight gray trousers and my favorite green blouse.

I lounge a moment, stretching, teasing him, and his breath catches. When he speaks again, his voice has just a little too much air in it. "Katniss, please get dressed. You're disrupting my thought patterns again." I stretch once more, testing his powers of concentration, running my hands down my body from breasts to thighs, and he makes a noise of mingled exasperation and laughter. "_Katniss_. Stop it. I promise we'll come back up here later." And then he really does laugh out loud. "I had no idea I could distract you so thoroughly. _ Look_ at you, you can't stop thinking about me."

He's right. I smile. He goes out of the bedroom and downstairs, his prosthesis thumping on the steps as usual, and I get into the shower for a fast one, then get dressed and towel my hair dry.

When I go downstairs, he's in the kitchen making scrambled eggs, and Haymitch is sitting at the table, as red-eyed and grumpy as any mole dug up and made to sit in bright sunlight. "Oh good. I'm starving," I say.

"Just make me some tea," Haymitch grumbles. "Shoulda let me sleep while you had breakfast."

"Go back to sleep at the table," I suggest. "You should be used to that by now. I can find you an empty bottle to hold if that would make you more comfortable." He glares at me. Despite the fact that he was there for me when I needed him last night, I glare back.

Peeta dishes up eggs and toast for everybody, and there's hot chamomile tea too. Haymitch dumps two heaping spoonfuls of honey in his tea. "Go easy on that," I protest. "That honey came out of a bee tree Joss Kidd found in the woods."

"No kidding?" Peeta asks. I hadn't told him about it yet.

"He's going to keep bees as well as making wood furniture, but he's just built a hive for the bees, and this honey is from the old hive in the tree. When it's gone, there won't be any more until the bees make it next year. Assuming they survive the winter." I glare at Haymitch again.

"Shut up. I'll buy you some honey if I eat it all," he says, still stirring.

"Well, fine!"

"_Fine_."

"Aren't you going to eat your eggs?" I say, pointing my fork at his plate. They are excellent scrambled eggs, cooked gently, nicely seasoned with salt and a bit of sage. Peeta's a good cook.

"I ate eggs at frickin' dark o'clock this morning," he says dangerously, narrowing his eyes at Peeta.

"What'd_ I _do, to make you so mad about those eggs?" Peeta asks. His voice is not quite right, hasn't been all day. He must have screamed a lot last night. "They smelled really good. I should have eaten them."

"What eggs are these?" I ask, totally confused.

"Oh. Dr. Lida made them this morning before she left. I just couldn't swallow them. My throat hurt," Peeta explains. "Yelling. _You_ know." He makes his embarrassed face.

Dr. Lida likes me, but I think she _really_ likes Peeta. Well, and can I blame her for that? People do like him. Which is part of why it's so painful for him to feel unreliable and scary when he has these episodes.

So when I have eaten my eggs, Haymitch pulls out these two envelopes and tosses them on the table. They are both addressed to me – at the house where I officially live, not to me at Peeta's house.

One of them has been opened. The other one has Gale's name and a District Two address in the area for the sender's information.

I am instantly and irrevocably enraged. I make a grab for Haymitch's collar so I can yell directly into his face, but he's expecting it and sways out of my way. Then I wheel around and grab for Peeta's shirt, but apparently I have become too predictable. Peeta ducks back out of my grasp as well, and I don't try it a second time because I suddenly see what someone looking in the window would see: a panicky-mad teenage girl, not very big, making misguided attempts on the lives of two much bigger men, neither of whom would willingly engage in hand-to-hand combat with her.

This is idiotic.

Peeta meets my eyes, and he's still embarrassed, and all at once I understand that whatever's in these letters had something to do with the turmoil of last night. I want to tell him I'm sorry, but Haymitch is sitting right there, so I can't. I say it with my eyes. Then I hold out my hand to him. He takes it. Smiles faintly.

"Okay," I say, and sit down in my usual chair. Peeta sits back down next to me, and we're still holding hands. "Okay, Haymitch, what's the damage?" I know without even asking him that he's been the one to open that official-looking letter.

And he hunches across the table, and he tells me. Peeta keeps squeezing my hand, but I don't know if he's trying to reassure me or he wants me to reassure him.

It's bad. I hadn't expected this. I'd expected to be left alone, damaged and mentally incapacitated and completely out of all the political crap of the Capitol. I'd expected that they'd leave me to rot here in Twelve, so very very far away from the place where things are being decided.

But no.

I don't know what's worst. Going back to the Capitol to visit is bad enough. Going back for what they're still calling the "Final Hunger Games" is awful. Going to talk to someone I don't know about my mental state is terrifying. When Haymitch mentioned that part, Peeta about squeezed my fingers off, so I know that this is what troubles him most.

I'd like to run screaming. I'd like to go to sleep and never wake up, and avoid all this pain. I can do neither, for the sake of these two people sitting at the table with me. I don't know whether to be angry or afraid. So I am both. And this is very bad for me, because I do know that I cannot succumb to that terrible lethargy that drags me down into the black blackness of my soul.

I can't. Peeta needs me to be aware and fighting. Haymitch needs me fighting, too.

This comes to me in a flash, while Haymitch is still talking. I sit and listen, and when he's done I sit and think about ways that I can use to try to stay out of the black hole, and meanwhile Haymitch stares at me and Peeta squeezes my hand.

"Say something," Peeta pleads.

I take a deep breath. When I speak, my voice is steady. "Okay. So we leave in... how many days?"

"Depends on whether you want to go hovercraft or train, sweetheart," Haymitch says. "Hovercraft, day before we're needed. Train, well... probably two days. Up to you."

"Up to you," Peeta echoes.

"But we have at least two weeks?" Haymitch nods. "Okay, then," I say. "Two weeks." I'm not sure what I need to do to prepare myself, but there are things I will need to do here.

Before I go back to the Capitol. My stomach turns over at the thought.

Haymitch sits back in his chair and raises his eyebrows at Peeta. I feel rather than see Peeta's tiny shrug. "Train?" I ask him. It's what I'd rather do, take the train and spend most of the time seeing countryside or snuggling in our cabin. Talking strategy with Haymitch. Getting used to the idea that we'd be in the Capitol when the train stops. Spending our nights doing what I now know Peeta wanted to do on our previous train trips.

It's like he can read my mind, or I'm reading his. He gives me a crooked smile that has a hint of wickedness in it, and simply nods. "Train, then," I say to Haymitch, and he nods too.

The silence stretches out. It's broken by Peeta. "Do you want to open your other letter now?"

I shake my head. Whatever Gale has written to me must be read in private, and I should go out to the rock I used to think of as "ours" to read it. "Later," I say. I will probably tell Peeta about what the letter says anyway, but I will have to read it myself first.

"Well," says Haymitch, with the air of getting down to unpleasant business, "we need to talk to some people. I spoke to Effie on the phone yesterday, and she knows nothing about the arrangements. I don't know who's in charge of this thing, and I don't even know anyone who _would_ know who's in charge of this thing."

"Is she still working in that office?" Peeta asks, and Haymitch nods. "That's a waste. Effie could probably organize the weather."

The corner of Haymitch's mouth twitches, but he doesn't quite smile. "I'll try getting hold of Annie and Johanna and Beetee, see what they know. Or who they know."

"I'll call Dr. Aurelius and get his advice," Peeta offers.

Haymitch agrees that it's a good idea. And then he looks at me, with a level gaze that tells me that first, he knows I'm not going to like what he's going to say, and second, I need to hear it anyway because he thinks it's important. "Sweetheart, you need to read your other letter. Your old hunting buddy has become a governmental-military bigwig, and he might be in a position to help you better than anyone else. Will you go read it now?"

I nod, not speaking, dreading it. "And will you tell us whether anything in it bears on this Capitol visit? Anything at all?" Haymitch continues. I nod again. It's sensible. "We don't need to know the personal stuff."

"Right." In the tenseness of Peeta's thigh touching mine, I can feel how agitated he has become from the moment Haymitch brought Gale into the conversation. Of course Peeta would have been upset by the prospect of returning to the Capitol under any pretext, but this one scares him, and he's also still upset that the Victors' council had voted to hold another Hunger Games, with Capitol children as tributes. If anything could have upset him more than that, it is apparently the idea of Gale, back in my life.

Which is _stupid_, because I'd choose Peeta again, over and over again, always. But I blame his witch mother for making him feel so insecure. And maybe myself, for not making him feel secure. For not telling him I choose him.

_Author's Note: I **suck,** okay? I truly suck for not updating this and not explaining that I had personal stuff going on. I'm sorry. Anyway, I hope to be back to updating regularly, probably once a week or so. There's a crap-ton of stuff already written, and where I've been stuck is in a bridge area, getting from HERE to THERE. (Transitions, always my problem.) Couple more chapters of pre-Capitol visit to go, and then we can get into some stuff told in the POV of everybody's favorite foulmouth, Johanna Mason._

_If you hung in there waiting patiently, Dear Reader, you are . and I love you. Reviews much appreciated._


	30. Lack-of-update apology plus promise!

Um... look. I apologize right now because I haven't updated.

I'm not writer's-block-aded or anything, I'm _writing._ I just happen to be writing, ahem, sex scenes for the FUTURE – both for my Hunger Games fanfic and my Warrior one – and I'm having a hard time bridging time here.

Just promising you that I'll be back with more installments soon. Probably an update will come faster for The Light in Your Eyes – we have Gale's letter to get through (AANNNGGST, babies, angst!), and a Haymitch chapter, and then another Katniss POV chapter, and then while the former District 12 Victors are traveling to the Capitol for the anniversary "festivities," we'll go back several months to pick up with everybody's favorite foulmouth, Johanna (and THAT much is written).

But my story arc for Long Road Home is coming together nicely now, with two babes-with-history for darling damaged noble Tommy to play white knight to... so look for an update within a couple of weeks for that one as well. Sadly, those (ahem) sex scenes are several chapters down the road, but I'm getting a handle on where in the puzzle they go, and I've got some bridgework to repair, getting from Here to There.

Encouragement would be awesome. Love you all.


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